Jabulani or Pele, Diego spares none

The Jabulani got a powerful verbal volley from Diego Maradona, who tells it the way he thinks it is, reports Dhiman Sarkar.

The Jabulani got a powerful verbal volley from Diego Maradona, who tells it the way he thinks it is.

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“Listen, the pitch and the ball are the same for both teams. But both teams don’t have the same feet, so who’s affected by the ball and the way it runs off the ground,” he asked, after Argentina completed group engagements with strong all-win record here on Tuesday night. He suggested that players with better skills were worse off with this ball in this edition of the World Cup.

In absolutely no mood to relent, the coach gave Pele, Michael Platini and Franz Beckenbauer another earful and asked journalists to apologise. “Pele, Platini and Beckenbauer --- FIFA has a lot of people --- should look into this. They should stop talking about Diego and talk about the ball,” said a visibly agitated Maradona.

“We should have a ball that helps develop the game, give it an interesting twist. But this one —well I don’t call it a ball— we are not going to see any good moves in this World Cup.”

The group phase ending as well as it did for Argentina, Maradona said naysayers should now say sorry.

“The journalists who wrote absolute nonsense should apologise. Many of you said wrong things; you were wrong, really wrong. Right now we are showing what we can do,” he exclaimed.

Nobody really is doubting that.