Maradona is a frisson of excitement for UAE's sporting experiment

Luring the colourful strand of adventure known as Diego Maradona represents another quill in the UAE's bulging cap.

Diego Maradona's stay in the UAE is sure to be interesting, no matter how long it lasts.

Well now, of all the adventures in the adventurous recent sporting history of the UAE, this one could trump the field for adventurousness.

Al Wasl hired Diego Maradona as manager. It boggles the senses and sustains the pattern all at once.

As the UAE continues to import compelling strands of global sport - the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, the Fifa Club World Cup, the Race to Dubai golf - suddenly it imports that compelling one-human strand known as Maradona. Saying this should be interesting rather wallows in understatement.

Score another one for the small-populated country that can, and has, and will continue to not shy away from experiment.

In Maradona, the UAE fortifies its bulging quill with another spectacle, another life arc to monitor, another biography from the world sport encyclopedia finding fresh dimension. Here comes still more fanfare. If it lasts long, it will be interesting. If it does not last long, it will be interesting. It could be louder than Yas Island on grand prix day.

Figuratively, anyway.

In the colourful case of Maradona - and there goes another understatement - we never have much idea precisely where it's all going except that it's probably going vividly. We can be sure only that this should decorate further a biography known mostly for what happened in the man's 20s. With such men, life after the surreal playing career can be trying, what with pedestals so difficult to abandon, and veering from shredding defences to handling existence can bore a soul.

Well down the cluttered trail, after much duress, Maradona materialised in the autumn of 2008 as a football manager, which at very least fulfilled sport's mission as distraction from day-to-day rigours. As Argentina haltingly navigated qualification for South Africa 2010, many opined that he could not manage. When Argentina did qualify for South Africa 2010, some opined if maybe he could (manage).

Analysing sport is often loopy, of course, and when Argentina tore through South Africa with the Maradona sideshow of Cuban cigars and ice-cream bars, the manager managed to provide a microcosm.

Momentum abounded through a 1-0 win over Nigeria, a 4-1 success over South Korea and a 2-0 triumph over Greece in group play, followed with a last 16, 3-1 victory over Mexico more convincing than their win over the same opponents at the same stage four years earlier.

So there came the shouting hints that Maradona could manage, broadening the suspense over a second successive Argentina-Germany World Cup quarter-final, jazzing up the plot because … because … because he's Maradona.

Then came a debacle after which people decided he could not (manage). From there to mid-July and post-World Cup and more news from Buenos Aires telling of a contract extension, followed two weeks later by still more stimulating news from the 34-degree south latitude as that contract idea had croaked.

As the international man of spectacle alights beside the Arabian Gulf, Al Wasl could provide a fine petri dish for the UAE's latest grand experiment in world sport, more light into the vagaries of Maradona as a manager. Or it could not. It could lend some cementing to all that jittery trajectory from the World Cup process that stands as Maradona's only major managerial legacy.

Or it could not.

It should provide entertainment in its boldness both stirring given the figure in question and unsurprising given the country in question.

As of last July 3, a Saturday, the world witnessed Maradona both in Cape Town and at an impasse. As the manager of a gifted Argentina team, he had stood uncommonly humbled in his suit near the touchline as a cosmopolitan German team demolished a hopeful Argentina.

That 4-0 defeat qualified as one of those outcomes confusing to the eyeballs, unaccustomed as they are to seeing such talent treated with such dispatch.

In exit from the World Cup at its quarter-final stage, Maradona had hugged his daughter. He had hugged players. He had spoken of "sadness" he called "really strong", sadness he rated unparalleled in a testing life then nearing 50 years long. Sages reckoned that match would conclude his 20 months managing Argentina. As of 24 days later, it had.

Where might Maradona's mighty arc veer from there, besides a premature return flight to Buenos Aires?

I reckon that had we stopped to mull it then, smack amid all the buzz of the World Cup, amid all the hosannas for alluring Germany, amid the anticipation for the Germany-Spain semi-final that towered over the tournament, we could have guessed educatedly that he would alight in a country profoundly unafraid of adventure, and we even might have guessed the country.