It was just like the good old times. There was the crowded hotel lobby jammed with twice as many reporters as hotel guests. There was a chaotic news conference liberally sprinkled with venomous attacks on his enemies, real or imagined. Finally, too, there was that dramatic arrival at Rome's Fiumicino Airport when he was greeted with a summons from tax inspectors.

Yes, folks, Diego Armando Maradona was back in town last weekend. Maradona's brief "Roman holiday" served as a vivid reminder of those heady - and often controversial - days between 1984 and 1991 when he single-footedly guided Napoli to the top of the Italian footballing tree. Maradona had barely stepped off his flight from Buenos Aires when he was confronted by a posse of 20 Guardia Di Finanze policemen. "Are you Maradona?," asked one policeman.

"Yes," replied Maradona.

"Sign here, then, you owe $51 million to the Italian State . . ."

"You don't think I've got that sort of money on me now, do you?"

Maradona had returned to Italy last weekend ostensibly to take part in a TV programme and to launch a series of commemorative medals, bearing his own image. He had also returned to discuss a possible forthcoming financial involvement with Napoli football club. Those engagements, however, became temporarily sidetracked by the rumpus prompted by the income tax evasion charges.

In a subsequent hectic news conference Maradona explained that, as far as he was concerned, his contract with Napoli required the club to pay his income tax.

The whole business was proof of the extent to which he had been betrayed by the Napoli president (then and now) Corrado Ferlaino.

Inevitably, too, Maradona's outburst against Ferlaino ended Napoli's plans to involve him in the club's future plans. Joint president Giorgio Corbelli excluded any future deal with Maradona declaring that the explayer's "instability" could damage the club.

It would be nice to dismiss all of the above as part of the never-ending "roadshow" laid on by Maradona. It would be nice, too, to imagine the world's one-time number one footballer was merely taking a harmless, nostalgic walk down memory lane.

Yet, none of those who once admired Maradona's unique footballing talents could feel totally reassured by what we saw and heard last weekend. It was not just that Maradona was his usual irascible self when it came to appointments, sleeping through most of his Friday commitments in his $900-a-night Hilton Hotel room.

When he did emerge, after 6 p.m., to hold that polemical news conference, he looked and sounded like a tired man. He had difficulty explaining himself, with only his sense of anger and betrayal clear.

Maradona may well have ongoing physical problems. His battle to kick his all too-publicised cocaine habit may well have left some indelible marks. Yet, in all probability, Maradona's biggest problem may be another, much more banal and all too predictable.

As he prepared to hold his news conference, he offered photographers one of many "photo-ops" when stopping to place a kiss on a photograph of himself, in the Argentina jersey at the time of his 1986 World Cup win. Maradona was looking back with all too obvious regret on the player he had once been. For Maradona, as for so many professional sportsmen, there is an overwhelming sense that the best is behind him. Looking at him last weekend, we would share that impression.