There’s some odd stuff coming from the mouth of Diego Maradona’s European agent Walter Soriano today. A couple of news sites in the UK are reporting that Maradona is considering a number of European managerial jobs, and that his agent seems to be angling to get him the Aston Villa job recently vacated by Martin O’Neill. Apparently, Diego is already in negotiations with another English club as well. Your guess is as good as mine…
Maradona was linked with the Napoli job in the wake of his Argentina contract ending, and at the same sort of time was offered the Mexican national team manager’s position. Neither of those have come to fruition, and I would think that his tax disputes with the Italian government might get in the way of a move to a club in that country. Soriano’s comments, reported here by Sky Sports, don’t actually say that he’s been offered – or even stands a cat in Hell’s chance of getting – the Villa job, but seem a fairly barefaced attempt at angling to receive just such an offer.
The identities of the other European clubs supposedly in talks with Maradona haven’t been mentioned, but I think it’s telling that the ‘other club in England’ aren’t identified as necessarily being a Premier League team. Given the thinking (or lack thereof) of a lot of English club owners, a publicity-driven appointment by an ambitious chairman might not be out of the question, considering Maradona clearly wants to have a go at managing somewhere. Watch this space…
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Hasta El Gol Siempre 