El Diego - Maradona's Egobiography

Maradona has rushed out 'his' story after a succession of problems with his heart. "This book isn’t about my private life," he says, curiously for an autobiography, and context is relegated to the footnotes. The subtext is Maradona against the world.

Here is an example of obstacles put in the way of Maradona: In 1990 he was arrested and banned for 15 months. To Maradona, this was a conspiracy by FIFA, aggrieved at Argentina making the Italia 90 World Cup final instead of the home nation. Big business was also involved in some ill-defined way. He doesn't even mention the reason for the arrest; the cocaine found in his apartment.

He then describes journalists turning up at his country house and his annoyance at this. The footnotes elaborate on this annoyance, [Maradona shot the journalists with an air rifle].

He has a curious turn of phrase, "he let the tortoise get away from him," an example of a line repeated throughout the book meaning the person isn't in control of a situation. The translator notes that this isn't a local idiom, just something Maradona has invented.

His ego wears the book down and he writes almost exclusively from the third person. The whole thing feels as if it is a stream of consciousness shouted into a microphone and transposed straight into type. It is impossible to sympathise because there is not a shred of humility.

According to Maradona, he is always up against the wall, flying in the face of officialdom, combating vague injustices. "I'm just a simple kid from a Buenos Aires shanty town", he says from his country mansion. Contradictions pepper the text and the final third most resembles Maradona himself; bloated, slightly manic and paranoid.

There are better books dealing with Maradona. Jimmy Burns' biography and John Ludden's look at Maradona's career in Naples being two good reads. They write about Maradona better than Maradona writes about himself because they suppress the paranoia.

He was the greatest footballer of his generation and in later life, with sober and humble reflection, could have written one of football's great stories. This isn't that book and unfortunately, I don't think he will live long enough to publish it.