'Diego Maradona is on a different planet'... England icon reveals one tactic he used to deal with Argentina legend

EXCLUSIVE: Diego Maradona was so outrageously good at football that an England international only had one option to contain him.

While Lionel Messi is undoubtedly a superstar, for many, the maverick is still the greatest player Argentina has ever produced.

Des Walker on how he handled Diego Maradona

During a clash between Nottingham Forest and Barcelona, Des Walker discovered firsthand just how special Diego Maradona was. With such spectacular skills, the defender had just one tactic in mind to keep the gifted athlete at bay.

In an exclusive interview with Sporf, via talkSPORT Bet Online Slots, the former centre-back explained: “It was difficult to play against him to say the least. It’s funny, really, because the very first time we played Barcelona, I was playing for the youth team in the stadium next door, in the 23,000-seater, and I played half an hour, and Brian Clough took me off. I was gutted; I didn’t say, ‘Why did you take me off’? But that was what was in my head. He said to me, ‘I took you off because I’m going to play you tomorrow in the first team’. It was a pre-season tournament where there were us, Ajax, Barcelona and AC Milan—it was the four biggest clubs because we were European champions the year before. Sometimes, it rains in Spain and the pitch wasn’t playable, if you knocked the ball it would only roll two yards and get stuck.”

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He continued: “I didn’t start, and I was on the bench sitting there, and Maradona, I’d heard his name, but I didn’t know too much about him. It kicked off, and we got the ball, and we kept falling over it because it wouldn’t roll, but it came to Maradona, and he kept flicking it up, dribbling it and volleying it over there, and I’m sitting on the bench thinking, ‘This guy is on a different planet’. So, when you come on, and it’s the first time you play against him, you’re in awe of him already. I thought, ‘Just turn him around, don’t try and win the ball, his control is too good’. And that’s how I played him, with that amount of respect, of don’t ever try and win the ball, just turn him around and send him away from your goal. That’s the best you can do.

“With certain players, that’s all you can do, you’ve got to realise their ability and their strengths, and if you can annul their strengths, that’s good enough. No one is going to get the ball off them. That’s the beauty of the game. My mum helped me a lot when I was a kid, because she said, ‘Son, there’s no shame in coming second best against the best, but don’t come second best against the worst’. So, I had no fear; I’d just look forward to playing against Maradona. Would I play against him every week? Yes, because there’s no shame in coming second best against the best. And if you come out on top on the day, look how much confidence you get from that. That’s how I played my career, I enjoyed playing against the very best in the world.”