In My Sporting Hero, a new podcast series from Nutmeg, footballers talk about the athletes who inspire them. Sometimes those sportsmen and women are also footballers. Sometimes not. You can listen to the audio on this post, on the podcast app of your choice (just search for ‘My Sporting Hero’) or enjoy the written version below.
Our next guest is Aiden McGeady. Aiden made his name at Celtic as a winger with a mesmerising bag of tricks at his disposal. While at Parkhead, he won four league titles, two Scottish Cups and a League Cup. He moved to Spartak Moscow for a record fee paid to a Scottish club, before spells at Everton, Sunderland and Hibernian.
Aiden’s sporting hero is Diego Maradona, the man without whom Argentina wouldn’t have won the 1986 World Cup and Napoli wouldn’t have enjoyed their golden era.
I first started watching football properly at the 1994 World Cup. My dad promised he would buy me the Brazil strip if they won the World Cup. They did.
I watched that World Cup religiously. Maradona scored his famous goal against Greece and celebrated right in front of the camera before failing his drugs test. I knew he was older then and, according to my dad, not the same player he had been, but he still moved so gracefully on the park, still had an aura and a considerable effect on his teammates. I like players who aren’t clean-cut and squeaky-clean, someone with a bit of edge to them – that’s what Maradona was.
My first pair of football boots were Puma Maradona. And I had an Argentina top with ‘Maradona 10’ on the back. I managed to get hold of all his videos, so I watched lots of footage of him when I was young; clips of him playing at the Youth World Cup, doing things that people had never seen done before. I saw a clip of him playing against Scotland [in 1979 at Hampden, aged 18], where he got the ball and went past five or six players. Then there’s the video of him doing keepie-ups with a tennis ball and a golf ball. It inspired me to do the same and eventually I could do over 100 keepie-ups with a golf ball.
The kind of raw skill that Maradona had was not showy. He wasn’t doing tricks for the sake of it. He was able to beat players with such ease by using his body shape and feints. He would anticipate when a player was going to dive in and take the ball around them by using his speed. His close control was incredible. The nearest player to Maradona would be Messi; you don’t see Messi doing stepovers or tricks when he can just go past players like they don’t exist.
If a player doesn’t have a natural instinct to beat opponents, then I think it’s really difficult – if not impossible – to coach them into doing it. You can coach them to be a better passer, have better movement and positional sense; to be a better finisher through habit. But beating players – you either have it, or you don’t. I don’t think Maradona would have had to work on his dribbling; it would just have been there. There’s weight distribution, waiting for a player to dive in or to dangle a leg in. You can make them move by throwing your body one way and making them fall for it. If you’ve got someone who can take players out of the game at will, then that’s the best thing a team or manager can have.
There were other great players around when I was growing up, but no one really compared to Maradona. What he did for Argentina in 1986 – when he carried that team on his back – was incredible. Then there was his time at Napoli, who had never won a Scudetto – he gave them two. My dad said it was the equivalent of Messi signing for Burnley and giving them two Premier League titles. Winning Serie A was such a big thing at the time, especially with the dominance of AC Milan. To have had that effect on his teammates was phenomenal.
My kids play FIFA, and they tell me that my trademark ‘McGeady Spin’ is still a part of the game. A lot of kids probably don’t remember me playing, but they play FIFA and know my skill, which is amazing. I used to work on tricks in the garden or street that I thought could help me beat an opponent or gain half a yard. I remember practicing one based on the Cruyff turn. I realised that if I added in another flick as I moved round, then it would help me move away from an opponent – that became the McGeady Spin. I was doing this from the age of 12; then, when I tried it in the first team, I realised that people hadn’t seen it before in that form. It’s amazing to have a skill named after me. It’s a legacy, I suppose.
Messi is probably a bit introverted – quite calm on the pitch – but during the 2022 World Cup he changed. At that tournament, you saw a bit of Maradona in him. I think it was just in the heat of the moment when he thought, I’ve got to win this! Can you imagine if Argentina had lost the final on penalties? The argument that was always held against Messi was that he hadn’t won the World Cup like Maradona; and Qatar was probably his last chance to cement his legacy as an equal to Maradona. I don’t think Messi’s Argentina were a particularly amazing team, and it was exactly the same with Maradona in 1986. If you’ve got one unbelievable player, they can take you the whole way.
The production company that made the Amy Winehouse and Senna documentaries were making one about Maradona. I asked if I could invest, and it proved a good investment. I thought the film was amazing. There were so many hours of footage that had never been released before, from his Naples days. It was eye-opening, with lots of new information, such as the extent of the grip the Mafia had on him. Just think of the pressure he had to deal with.
I got two friends involved as investors, so our names appear in the closing credits of that film.
My Sporting Hero: Aiden McGeady on Diego Maradona