Friday 31st October 2008 - 10:32:41
Diego Maradona will visit England this weekend to meet players before his likely debut as Argentina manager against Scotland next month.
His appointment is expected to be confirmed as manager on Tuesday and the 48-year-old will fly in to see Manchester United's Carlos Tevez and Liverpool's Javier Mascherano, who could play against Hull and Tottenham.
The team is due to play Scotland at Hampden Park on 19 November.
"I will travel to England on Saturday to see Tevez and Mascherano," the 48-year-old said. "And in Scotland I will make my debut."
"We are going to play the game against Scotland with the best team we've got," he added.
"I really never expected this although I always dreamed of having the chance."
Maradona, has very little coaching experience, just two brief spells as a club coach in Argentina in the 1990s.
He captained Argentina to a World Cup triumph in 1986, playing every minute of the tournament and scoring five goals, including two against England in the quarter-final, his first goal courtesy of an outrageous handball which he later described as "the hand of God", but the second is said by many to be the best goal ever scored. He danced past five England players before poking the ball past Peter Shilton.
Away from football Maradona's has had a tumultuous life struggling with a long-running cocaine addiction, alcoholism and obesity which saw him suffer a heart attack in 2004.
A second failed drugs test of his career saw him sent home from the 1994 World Cup in disgrace.
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