Diego Maradona has never been shy* when it comes to getting up on stage, any stage, and serenading his people with sonorous renditions of popular songs.
(*We could have ended that sentence there, to be honest)
Indeed, a cursory Youtube search presents dozens of clips of Maradona hollering off balconies, belting out this, that and the other at public events and even singing on live television whilst dressed up to the nines.
The following video falls into the latter category, featuring as it does the birthday boy (58 today!) warbling his way through a song called ‘El Sueño Del Pibe’ (The Dream Of The Kid) in the mid-1980s…
Dating from 1942, El Sueño Del Pibe is a lilting tango ballad about a young Argentinian boy who dreams of making it as a professional footballer. Lyricist Reinaldo Yiso was himself a promising young player who was on the books at Velez Sarsfield at one point before a badly fractured leg scuppered his aspirations.
The song also name-checks several famous Argentinian footballers of the 1940s: Emilio Baldonedo of Huracan, Rinaldo Martino of San Lorenzo, Mario Boye of Boca Juniors and Bernabe Ferreyra of River Plate.
Perhaps that’s why our Diego was feeling it so very deeply.
Or maybe it was the cocaine.