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Hello and welcome to the London Review of Books podcast. My name is Thomas Jones. There's no guest today, I'm afraid, just me reading my piece from the latest issue.

Shortcuts on Maradonna with a bit of help from some 1980s commentators.

Oh, brilliant play by Maradona. Still going.

Electric, Jerry.

You know, the World Cup, really, to have great World Cups, I think you need great individuals.

When you think of the one here previously, it was all about Pellion people like that. And I think this World Cup needs people like Maradon

as I light it up. That was absolutely sensational. I have a theory, more of a hunch, really,

that to be a real football fan, you have to commit to a team by the age of six or eight at the latest.

Unlike my friends whose fathers took them to watch

older shots, fourth division tussles on Saturday afternoons, I don't remember watching a football

match before the 1986 Mexico World Cup when I was already nine and a half. That term at school was

dominated by the build-up to the tournament. Someone put a giant poster up on the

classroom wall, a composite image of action shots of the star players, with Michel Platini, the

undisputed king of European football, in pride of place. Everyone, well, almost everyone, had the

Panini sticker album and was blowing all their pocket money trying to

...