By David Owen at Ellis Park, Johannesburg
June 12 – “We don’t know what is going to happen today”. This comment by Sergio Gustavo Segovia, a journalist with Diario Crónica, the Buenos Aires daily, epitomises the ambivalence many Argentinians feel about the man at the helm of their 2010 World Cup challenge: Diego Armando Maradona, possessor of the notorious Hand of God, quite possibly the greatest footballer seen on this planet.
Frankly, after witnessing today’s 1-0 victory by Maradona’s men in Johannesburg over a physically strong but disjointed Nigeria, this ambivalence is likely to remain.
After securing an early lead through Gabriel Heinze’s brilliant header, the boys in blue and white stripes put in a performance that was silky smooth up front - how the irrepressible Lionel Messi failed to score only Vincent “Hands of God” Enyeama in the Nigerian goal knows - but distinctly fallible at the back.
And this against an attacking force that is far from the tournament’s most potent.
Maradona, meanwhile, escaping the confines of one of world football’s bigger technical areas with comic regularity, in spite of the efforts of a green-jacketed FIFA official, put in a performance as virtuoso as any World Cup coach as he prowled the nearside touchline.
He grimaced, he gesticulated, he contested decisions, he kicked the ball at every opportunity and finally he hugged and kissed with abandon in a display of pent-up human emotion all the more noticeable for its contrast with Lars Lagerbeck, the phlegmatic Swede in the opposition dug-out.
“I have had so many emotions today,” he gruffly smiled when he appeared, munching a large apple, at the post-match press conference.
“The 2006 World Cup I saw as a fan, but today to be on the pitch as the coach of the Argentine squad is a really beautiful, wonderful feeling.”
It shouldn’t work; there really should be no way in which he ought to be able to emulate the feat of German great Franz Beckenbauer by winning the World Cup as both captain and manager.
His club coaching record is there for all to see in the pages of El Diego, one of the more compelling footballer’s autobiographies.
Two months at a club called Mandiyú (whose name, according to Gustavo Segovia, means “wool” in the Guarani language) during which his record was: Played 12, Won 1, Drew 6, Lost 5.
Then four months at Racing, a much bigger club, where he mustered two wins, six draws and three defeats in his 11 games.
With stats like those, you would have to figure that he was on course to be remembered as a coach at best as a sort of Argentinean Kevin Keegan.
And yet Argentina - for all their struggles to even qualify for this World Cup - possesses for my money the most technically gifted squad in South Africa.
And no player - no, not even Pelé - has this competition in his blood quite like Maradona.
Over three decades, win or lose, this larger-than-life figure, now pushing 50 and accoutred with a white-flecked beard, has usually contrived to make himself one of the stories of the tournament.
The obvious example, of course, was 1986, when Argentina became the closest thing to a one-man team ever to win football’s supreme honour.
But then there was 1994 when he scored against Greece, posing memorably for the cameras, before testing positive for ephedrine and heading home.
And 1990, when he carried a workmanlike but far from brilliant Argentine team to his second World Cup final.
Not to mention 1982, when the team flopped and he was red-carded against arch-rivals Brazil.
Even in 1978, he warranted a few headlines when, at 17, he was one of three players excluded from Cesar Luís Menotti’s World Cup-winning squad.
And in 2002 in Japan, I remember some kerfuffle about whether or not he would attend the tournament and Argentina’s clash in Sapporo with David Beckham’s England.
“We want to have confidence in him,” says Adrián Piedrabuena, another Argentine journalist working for Olé, the country’s only daily sports newspaper.
However, “The reality is that he still hasn’t shown he is a great technician.
“Only Maradona could have become national coach with so little experience.”
I repeat, it shouldn’t work.
Surely some wily old fox will outwit him later in the tournament and succeed in exploiting the weakness down the right side of the Argentine defence.
But this incomparable showman has shown us enough times already that he doesn’t come to World Cups just to make up the numbers.
I wouldn’t be completely astonished if he demonstrates that one more time.
David Owen is a specialist sports journalist who worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics. He will be reporting for insideworldfootball.biz from South Africa and tweeting at www.twitter.com/dodo938