THIS is a painful book about the crooked pretender to the football throne of Latin America. There is, of course, only one sovereign lord and master of that kingdom - and everyone knows he is Edson Arantes do Nacimento - Pele, that is. A lowly born, black Brazilian of noble sentiments, gentle and amazingly talented, O Rei Pele - Pele the King - will live in the people's memory wherever the sport is revered. Diego Maradona of Argentina has reached up to grab his mantle and seize Pele's crown, but the cunning little Argentine will never be able to rival the sovereignty of the Brazilian indeed, he is hardly worthy to carry his train.
Jimmy Burns, ward winning journalist and author, is incapable of writing boringly. He has done as good and as honest a book as could be written about the poor boy from the wrong end of Buenos Aires, who rose high and has fallen far under the influence of drugs, the Neapolitan Camorra and a particularly sickening group of hangers on and flatterers.
Hand of God is illuminating and atmospheric as it cuts through the web of myth, mystery and full blooded hypocrisy that surrounds one of the world's most adored and detested sportsmen.
In a seamless narrative, Burns recounts the birth of little Diego to the impoverished Toto and Chitoro in the Eva Peron Hospital in Avellaneda, a suburb of the Argentine capital; the beginning of his precocious career in football when he was hardly a teenager and his graduation to a first division side when he was a mere sixteen.
During the military dictatorship in the 1970s Diego went further than the majority of Argentines who merely shrugged at the generals atrocities. Inebriated by the attention he received from the leaders of Argentina's military tyranny, he lent his active support to those who were bloodily hacking away at human rights.
The glory days later at Boca, Barcelona and Napoli and captaining Argentina have been followed by the descent into drug addiction. While at Napoli he allowed himself to be used by the local mafia and he did so very consciously. Earlier this year, Burns recounts, Maradona confessed: "I became a favourite of the Camorra not because I was pretty or good, but because I made people happy, the same people they may have exploited. The relationship came down to a question of power and money, in other words.
Burns has done right in chronicling, without help from his subject, a life of the Argentine player who scores goals with his hands as, well as his feet. At the end of the book, however, the reader is left wondering whether the author's effort was worth it. Its worth must be as a primer for all aspiring professional footballers on how not to have a footballing career.
Surely the best thing Diego Maradona can do now is to realise what a mess he has made of his own life, lay aside the drugs, drop his hangers on and find someone to analyse with him where he went wrong.
Argentina can produce superb sportsmen - the late, supreme racing driver Juan Fangio was an outstanding example - but Diego never will be one of them.