Doug Gillon on Wednsday:

We admit to having experienced more than a frisson of Schadenfreude on that glorious day in June 1986 when La Mano de Dios orchestrated England's World Cup exit in Mexico's Aztec Stadium. It was impossible not to. Like a significant number of Scots, I was delighted by Diego Maradona's infamous fisted goal. Bliss was it on that dawn to be alive.

Anything to avoid having to endure a re-enactment of 1966.

Yet even so, I was disappointed that the world's greatest player at the time had felt obliged to resort to cheating. Why could he not have humiliated England by scoring a couple more goals like the one with which he followed up moments later, subsequently voted the Goal of the Century? Maradona took possession on the edge of the centre circle and with 11 touches wove his way for some 60 yards; past Hoddle, Reid, Sansom, Butcher (twice) and Fenwick, before luring Shilton into a dive and poking the ball under him from a tight angle.

With such mesmeric artistry at his disposal, why cheat?

Probably because it is inherent. Maradona is a serial cheat, unworthy of the adulation of a proud nation, though one around whose team's integrity there have long been doubts. Those of a certain age may recall the six World Cup goals conceded in the 1978 tournament by Peru's Argentina-born goalkeeper, Ramon Quiroga. No corruption was ever proved, but it is a fact that Argentina needed to win by four clear goals to survive.

Maradona, the unworthy icon, is now manager of his country's international team. So much for the red-top tabloid headline when he was banned from football for a second cocaine offence: "Dirty Diego Gone for Good". Now he's back, with the same newspaper yesterday perversely billing his return: "God comes to Hampden".

Maradona took recreational drugs, most notably cocaine, for much of his career. He admits as much in his biography. It was covered up by the teams he played for, notably Napoli, whose former president will reveal lurid details in a soon-to-be-published book, Maradona Opus. It weights 30 kilos, with 800 half-metre-square pages, and costs £1500. We're told that the club helped manipulate urine samples and conspired at test avoidance for six years.

He was caught for cocaine use in 1991 and suspended for 15 months. In 1994 he was again banned after having been caught at the World Cup finals using what FIFA called a "cocktail" of stimulants including ephedrine. In almost any other sport this would have brought a life ban. In 1997, he enlisted the help of unfrocked Olympic 100 metres champion Ben Johnson as a coach, and went back to Boca Juniors. Within months he was again done for cocaine, and suspended for 15 months. It's a moot point how good he might have become if he had kept his nose clean.

His drinking and womanising are legendary and his junk-food addiction had to be controlled by stomach stapling. He is now an ambassador against malnutrition. He was committed to psychiatric care against his will by his family, and seemed to have a season ticket to intensive care and rehab clinics. Last year he was reportedly treated for hepatitis, blamed on alcohol abuse. He claims to have kicked the cocaine habit for the past four years.

This, then, is the man being deified - not just in Argentina - but by large sections of the media, including Al Jazeera, whose idea of balanced reporting is to give publicity to those who engage in beheadings. Networks from the US, Norway, Fiji, Japan, and France are among those who have flocked to Glasgow to report the antics of this erstwhile addict whose appearance at Hampden seems likely to be at a loss to the SFA.

Pele, whose boots Maradona is not fit to lace, once asked a most pertinent question: "Why is it so many Olympic sportsmen lose their medals when they are caught taking drugs, and not him?"

A treatise on Maradona, following his apparent final fall from grace at the World Cup 11 years ago, showed a delightful lack of political correctness. David Hawkes, assistant professor of English at a US university, mentioned how Terry Butcher had commented after Maradona had ranted at the camera having scored against Greece, that he seemed to be on drugs.

This proved to be prophetically accurate, and with Maradona banned from further participation, Hawkes wrote: "It was an offence against the order of things that such a grubby little sleazeball should be so outrageously favoured by the gods; now that he had finally squandered his gifts, a moral order was restored to the universe."

The appointment of Maradona as Argentina manager is akin to having Dwain Chambers made director of UK Athletics coaching, or Johnson to the equivalent post in Canada.

Some may applaud this recovery from the longest-running of Maradona's many addictions - other than a serial compulsion to cheat. However, if George Burley shakes hands with his counterpart tonight, he would do well to count his fingers. And perhaps the referee should count the number of players Argentina send onto the park.