Numerous sources online are reporting that Diego Maradona will fly to London next month for talks about becoming the manager of a Premier League football team. One of Argentina's main newspapers, ClarÃn, has named Fulham as his potential new employers.
Never one for modesty, Maradona offered this gnomic quote to journalists who interrupted his summer holiday in Uruquay to ask about the rumours: "If they convince me, I may take it up". This from a man whose managerial record hitherto hasn't been terribly successful. Two short spells with domestic clubs in the mid-1990s were followed by an acrimonious eighteen months as the national coach, during which he presided over a 6-1 defeat against Bolivia and a World Cup 2010 campaign in which his star-studded team burned brightly but failed to progress beyond the quarter finals.
Fulham fans are yet to really throw their support behind current manager Mark Hughes, who has presided over a dispiriting campaign since taking over in the summer. Stranger characters may have stepped onto the Craven Cottage turf (Michael Jackson was a visitor in 1997, to say nothing of Mohammed al-Fayed) but it's difficult to imagine supporters embracing Maradona. Still, many football fans would love to see him, however briefly, in the English game, if only to hear Terry Butcher's reaction.
For the sake of the club's future, if they're preparing to offload Hughes, a better option might be a return for the newly-unemployed Roy Hodgson.
Photo / chutney bannister
