Feigning blindness didn’t get him an easy ride…

Diego Maradona’s post-World Cup qualification uber-cussing (”you lot suck my d**k” or “you lot take it up the a**e”, depending on what side of the equator you reside on), has earned him a two month ban and a fine of almost £14,815.

Directed at journalists who he claimed “treated [him] like garbage”, the outburst came at the end of a qualifying campaign fraught with personal attacks sent back and forth between the tubby manager and the Argentinean media.

Gone by 2011, having pretty much clocked the game of football

Carlos Tevez has always struck The Spoiler as a simple man with simple needs. Give him a football, bessie mates “Pat & Ji”, and his choice of knitted headscarf (black or white), and he’s happy. Professional football and all of its trappings, we imagine, he could take or leave. So it comes as no major surprise that, at the age of 25, the Argentinean forward has admitted considering retirement.

Speaking before Argentina’s 2-1 defeat in Spain on Saturday, Tev revealed losing his place in the national side to Gonzalo Higuain and the pressures of juggling both international and domestic football caused him to reevaluate his career:

It’s complicated, there’s my family, the desire to return to Boca Juniors, but I think about it. It crosses my mind to hang up my boots if we win the World Cup, although I have a contract [with Man City] until 2014.

Argentina boss is serious about counting calories…

Earlier this week The Spoiler brought news of the ‘unwanted side-effects’ Diego Maradona has been suffering after his short stint in fat camp a few months ago. Now we’re getting wind El Pibe de Oro has recently been on a few more diet-related adventures.

According to today’s Daily Star, on hearing of his plans to visit on a charity trip, a group of children from the slums of Calcutta, India decided to surprise the footballing legend with a birthday cake. After weeks spent begging for cash the kids bought a £200, 4ft high blue and white cake. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a carbs day for Diego:

“It was quite rude really. These children literally have nothing but the clothes on their backs. But they managed to put together all that money to get Maradona a really impressive birthday cake.

“He took one look at it and said no. He could have had at least one bite. It wouldn’t have killed him, or affected his diet.

Fan Kamal Akash, 12, said: “It was fantastic to see our hero. We would have liked him to have had some cake.”

Legend wins girl over with trouser cough

It seems Argentinean hacks aren’t the only people Diego Maradona has recently entreated to “suck it“. Word reaches us from Spanish rag Sport that The Golden Boy’s preparations for Argentina’s crucial World Cup qualifier against Uruguay basically consisted of chatting up attractive blondes in hotel lobbies and farting.

According to Uruguayan vixen Natalia Rosas, who crossed paths with Diego while he was holed up at the Shreaton Hotel in Montevideo, the tubby gaffer seems to still be suffering the side effects of the steamed cabbage and prune diet forced upon him at fat camp:

“He invited me to have coffee with him and while we were talking we both wished each other good luck. Then we hugged and he kissed me. I was left with the taste of onion or garlic that he had just eaten. Then there was the gas. Diego got nervous and started moving around on his chair to try to justify himself

The Spoiler attempts to explain the Argentinian’s inconsistency

A strange thing tends to happen when Lionel Messi pulls on an Argentina shirt - generally speaking, he loses the dazzling talent that made him the centre piece in Barcelona’s triple-winning season. But why does this happen? As the Albicelestes prepare for a vital clash with Peru on Saturday, Spoiler correspondent Sam Williams gives five possible reasons for his inconsistent form on the international stage…

The manager
Comparisons with Maradona are inescapable, particularly when the manager forces the iconic number 10 shirt on Messi. Before the recent World Cup qualifiers against Brazil and Paraguay, Maradona said of his star player: “We’ve been heaping responsibility onto him. He’s fast, concentrated, totally committed. He knows the chance he has.” Argentina duly lost both games.

Messi is consistently outstanding for Barcelona because he plays in a liberated, care-free manner. He knows how good he is, and if Maradona lets him get on with it, he could help dig Argentina out of the World Cup Qualification hole they find themselves in.

The formation
In the aforementioned defeat to Paraguay in Asuncion, Messi was deployed up-front in a 4-4-2 formation. For all his attacking qualities, five-foot-seven Messi isn’t an out-and-out striker and he couldn’t impose himself against the big, physical Paraguayan centre-backs. Alongside a target-man

Argentinean legend turns out for an English club for one day

As a favour to his friend and international colleague, Diego Maradona agreed to play in Ossie Ardiles’ 1986 testimonial, which saw Tottenham beat Inter Milan 2-1.

The game - for which Maradona arrived late after being personally driven from his hotel by Ardiles - took place just a few weeks before the 1986 World Cup. Somehow, we don’t think the Argentinean coach would have received such a warm reception at an English ground in the weeks that followed.

Thanks to Seb for the tip

£3,600 bling confiscated by tax collectors

It’s not been a good September for Diego Maradona. Having starting the month with humbling defeats to Brazil and Paraguay in Argentina’s beleaguered World Cup 2010 qualifying campaign, he’s since been told by Viagra-hawking legend Pele he wasn’t actually that good at football after all and endured ridicule for being packed off to a fat farm in Italy.

The latest ignominy was suffered after Italian fraud squad police followed him to said fat farm last week and raided it, in an attempt to try and recover some of the £28m Diego owes in back taxes from his time at Napoli between 1984 and 1991.

Albicelestes start to turn against their Messiah

A hacker operating under the name ‘KKR’ gave the Argentinean football authorities another headache last Friday, as he exposed security lapses in the official AFA website.

Visitors to the site who may have been seeking information information on the hapless South American side were instead treated to a picture of Diego Maradona in a Brazil shirt, with the caption “A picture is worth a thousand words.”

It’s not a Photoshopped image you see, but a still from an advert for a South American soft drink, in which the former recreational drug fan made the extremely regrettable decision to wear the colours of his fierce national rivals. Check out the advert at the bottom of this post.

Even though the security breach occurred last Friday (for the third time, incidentally), the AFA website is still down.