Maradona v Castro: Football Star Scores Winner in New Career

The Argentine football legend Diego Maradona looks set to crown his new career as a television interviewer by landing a rare, exclusive interview with a man not used to being asked awkward questions - Fidel Castro. Maradona, whose successful television work comes with a newly slimmed-down look achieved with the help of Cuban doctors, was yesterday reported to have landed in Havana with a film crew ready for the interview.

Maradona is an admirer of the 79-year-old president, who has put Cuban doctors at the former footballer's service over the years to help him shake off an addiction to cocaine that, until recently, looked as though it might kill him.

An employee at La Pradera health spa, a retreat where Maradona lived for four years, yesterday told Reuters that he was back in town with a team of television producers.

"Maradona arrived yesterday and looks like a young boy he is so thin," said the spa employee.

The turnaround in Maradona's appearance this year has been spectacular; he is believed to have weighed up to 18 stone at one point. Last year he was rushed to hospital with heart and lung problems. But after reportedly having a stomach-stapling operation earlier this year, the 44-year-old is looking better than he has done since he stopped playing football.

Maradona's show, The Night of Number 10, named after the number he once wore on his soccer shirt, has gained huge audiences as Latin American pop stars and soccer players have queued up to be interviewed by the man many still idolise as a hero. His first guest, when the show opened in mid-August, was Brazil's Pele, another former number 10.

Besides Castro, Maradona has said he plans to get the soccer players Zidane and Ronaldo on his show, as well as the basketball player Michael Jordan and the golfer Tiger Woods.

Maradona, whose long-term problems with cocaine began when he moved to Europe to play in Barcelona, was ejected from the 1994 World Cup finals after failing a drugs test.

He led Argentina to World Cup victory in 1986 when he famously scored two goals, one with his hand, to knock England out in the quarter-finals.