David Leggat: Maradona: sideshow of the sidelines

Picture the scene. The All Blacks have just won the World Cup on Eden Park in two years' time.

As the players collapse into each other's arms, a grey-haired man in his sixties, wearing a dark suit runs on to the ground and launches a swallow dive and slide across the turf in jubilation.

Graham Henry then rises to his feet, hitches up his pants, and does it again.

Can't see it happening? Argentina's passionate soccer fans probably thought the same about their manager. More fool them, given that Diego Maradona is in charge of their national team.

When a goal four minutes into injury time against Peru in driving rain in Buenos Aires kept Argentina's World Cup hopes alive, that's what their manager did.

And a few days later, after the two-time World Cup winners had ensured their participation at the finals in South Africa next year, courtesy of a goal just before the end to beat bitter rivals Uruguay this week, Maradona marked out his long run.

He made some grubby remarks about a range of people, most notably Argentina's sports writers, and now he's in hot water.

Not that Maradona is a stranger to a spot of strife. El Gordo has lived to fight another day many times.

What a strange world he must inhabit. Late on in the tortuous South American qualifying programme - 18 rounds to find the best four of 10 teams to progress directly to the finals - with Argentina in real trouble and struggling to keep their hopes afloat, Maradona took himself off to a health clinic in Italy. As you do.

You might think he had more pressing matters to deal with. But then who can figure out what's going on upstairs with this guy. His failings as a person are well documented, as are his wondrous gifts when a ball was at his feet.

There are those who think it would have been just deserts had the tubby one overseen the first Argentine campaign to fall short of the finals since 1970. Not here. Having Maradona at the finals - assuming he has not finally driven the bosses to show him a wide door to waddle through before they start - should be an absolute hoot.

Say what you like, he's not dull. The fact he clearly can't coach for toffee is neither here nor there.

He's Maradona, soccer's circus clown. But another thought occurred this week.

Argentina were cup winners in 1978 at home - admittedly in a campaign orchestrated by the military junta of the time, not to mention containing the odd distinctly dodgy scoreline - and again in 1986 when Maradona carried the nation. They are World Cup royalty, sort of.

So if Argentina were not in South Africa next year and New Zealand were, might that not seem a touch odd?

The land of the long white oval ball at soccer's big show, and the next generation on from the old heroes like Passarella, Ardiles, Kempes, Valdano and above all Maradona, not?

This is not to decry the All Whites in the slightest. Overcome Bahrain in Wellington next month and it will be the year's finest moment by a New Zealand team, considering the stage to which they will have ascended.

As it happens there is room for both Argentina and the All Whites in South Africa, courtesy of a bulging World Cup finals format of 32 nations.

Sport needs its oddballs. Lord help us if all managers went Sphinx-like on the world's sidelines.

As Maradona was doing his belly flop, his former teammate, and Tottenham Hotspur hero, Ossie Ardiles was watching in a television studio. Ardiles didn't react at all, the point being he'd seen it all from the fat man. Nothing would surprise him and it shouldn't us either.