Reaching for the stars at Dundee

Three years ago this month David Murray, chairman of Rangers, said: "The purist view of football is over, it is history

Three years ago this month David Murray, chairman of Rangers, said: "The purist view of football is over, it is history. When I supported Ayr United as a boy, it was pure blood, sweat and liniment. But football has moved on to a different planet and Scottish football has got to go with it."

Well, this week it appeared Scottish football finally landed on that different planet. It's just that it might not be the destination Murray was hoping for. It's not that it's inhospitable, more ridiculous. The timing might have surprised him, too. This is meant to be the mid-winter break, a time of calm.

In this new world Dundee is the centre of the universe. It being of a parallel nature, Carlisle is the unlikely second city.

Now, the attractions of Dundee are not difficult to fathom, and that is not a compliment. The city does possess one huge advantage over many others and that is its bridge. The Tay rail bridge is a magnificent structure and if you sit at the front of the train as it reaches Dundee from the south you can see the rear of the train curling over the massive sweep of the Tay. It is beautiful and worth the trip on its own.

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Sadly, when you get off the train you are in Dundee. It is marketed as the City of Discovery by the council and you quickly discover the city centre reveals a higher than normal ratio of boarded up shops and houses. If urban deprivation were the criteria, Dundee and Dundee United might be higher up the league.

But there must be some energy force field here because Dundee has leapt into the collective imagination and become its capital. Three foreign princes are responsible for this, attracted by some bizarre invisible magnet. Ivano Bonetti, Claudio Caniggia and Diego Maradona are Dundee's Latin triumvirate.

Bonetti's role is the easiest to explain. He is manager of Dundee FC, a club that won its only league title in 1962 and only Scottish Cup in 1910. It could be argued they have under-achieved.

But Bonetti is at the forefront of a dark blue revival. Central to this is Bonetti's contacts book. An Italian of no little playing pedigree, Bonetti somehow contrived to persuade one of the best and most famous players anywhere in the world in the 1990s, Caniggia, to uproot to the east coast of Scotland in October. Maybe Caniggia has a thing for bridges, because he certainly likes Dundee. Not only has he run tirelessly for the cause, Caniggia has taken to Dundee so much he has extended his contract to 2003. He and his catwalk wife are said to be planning to buy a castle.

The Argentinian World Cup winner - banned from football for cocaine abuse while a Roma player six years ago - has also taken to phoning a friend about how happy he is by the North Sea. That would be strange enough in itself except, of course, Claudio's best mate is the man voted by FIFA as their joint footballer of the 20th century, Maradona.

Maradona is now 40 and this week's earth-shattering news is that it may be the age his life starts at Dundee. Claudio has been recommending Scotland to Diego, currently battling drug addiction as he shuttles back and forth between the sanctuary in Cuba afforded by Fidel Castro and his native Argentina. Dundee are interested, so is South American television. Due to Caniggia, Argentine TV is already transmitting Dundee matches. A different planet.

The Scotsman reported the Maradona connection as evidence of "the increasingly insane environment that is Dens Park," Dundee's home, and contacted a former wearer of the number 10 shirt - the one Maradona would insist on having. His name is James Grady and he thought it all a good idea as, in his words, Dundee fans are "absolutely mental". They might need to be.

The whole thing could be a fantasy, one dreamed up by a certain Stephen Brown. Remember him? Brown was the man who tried to buy Carlisle United with the aim of taking them into Scottish football. The theory was that being the fourth or fifth biggest club in Scotland is better than being the 92nd best in England. In a week of peculiar stories - the formation of a breakaway league by the smaller Scottish clubs was another - it was probably the one with the most sense.

It's just that it was undermined somewhat by Brown himself. Rather than a businessman who had sold a hotel in Spain for £6.3 million sterling recently, it turned out Brown lived in sheltered housing in the border town of Peebles and that his last job was as a barman in the local curry house.

Poppadoms?