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"I felt like Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."
"The problem is that they are all stars at Madrid. You need someone to carry the water to the well."
"I did it with the hand of reason"
"God makes me play well. That is why I always make the sign of the cross when I walk out onto the field. I feel I would be betraying Him if I didn't."
Maradona after beating England in the 1986 World Cup quarter-final, "It was as if we had beaten a country, more than just a football team."
Maradona's reply when asked about the 'Hand of God goal' against England, "It was the hand of God."
Maradona on the 'Hand of God goal', "It was like pick-pocketing the English and stealing a win."
"When I wear the national team shirt, its sole contact with my skin makes it stand on an end."
Maradona on devoted fans who held a vigil while the football legent spent time in hospital recently, "I saw death close up and I wanted them to cover me, to caress me. When God decides it's time, I guess He'll come for us."
Maradona on the FIFA Player of the Century Award, "I had the vote of the people. Pele won by the book."
Maradona in 1996: "I was, I am and I always will be a drug addict. A person who gets involved in drugs has to fight it every day."
Maradona: "I worked hard all my life for this. Those who say I don't deserve anything, that it all came easy, can kiss my arse."
Maradona on Argentina's group match against England: "They will show that the English are absolutely terrified, they are quaking in their boots."
Maradona: "[Zinedine] Zidane may be the best master of the ball today, but his play is sad!"
Maradona on Cuban president Fidel Castro: "For me he is a god."
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Pele commenting after sharing the FIFA Player of the Century Award, "If he thinks he's the best player of the century that's his problem."
Former England manager Sir Alf Ramsey, "Pele had nearly everything. Maradona has everything. He works harder, does more and is more skilful. Trouble is he'll be remembered for another reason. He bends the rules to suit himself."
Pele, "My main doubt is whether he has the sufficient greatness as a person to justify being honoured by a worldwide audience."
Oasis band member, Noel Gallagher: "The greatest footballer in the world."
Argentine psychologist Gustavo Bernstein, "Maradona is our maximum term of reference. No one embodies our essence better. No one bears our emblem more nobly. To no other, in the last twenty years, have we offered up so much passion. Argentina is Maradona, Maradona is Argentina."
Inside Sport, Australia: "Diego Maradona stopped being the world's finest football player and started being a tragic, tormented figure because he was deluded, manipulated and exploited."
Goal: "Like the Gallagher brothers [of Oasis], Maradona's life has had its fair share of sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll. Only more so. For with Diego you can add poverty, corruption, conspiracy, adultery and sainthood."
Pele on Maradona: "My main doubt is whether he has the sufficient greatness as a person to justify being honoured by a worldwide audience."
Graeme Souness on Kenny Dalglish: "He's better than Platini, certainly better than Rumminegge and Maradona. For me he is the greatest footballer in the world."
Kevin Keegan: "I don't think there is anybody bigger or smaller than Maradona."
Argentine national manager Carlos Bilardo on announcing his team before World Cup 1990, "Maradona and ten others."
Cameroon's Charles Ntamark before his team's 1-0 win over Argentina, "It may be that I am marking Maradona in the opening match. We know all about him, but he doesn't know anything about me."
Roddy Forsyth: "Don't cry for Maradona, Argentina."
Michel Platini: "What [Zinedine] Zidane can do with a football, Maradona could do with an orange."
Sir Stanley Matthews on Maradona: "The best one-footed player since Puskas."
Rio Ferdinand: "I mainly imitated Maradona and even Ronaldo a little bit."
Kevin Keegan: "Michael Owen has made as big an impact on world football as Cruyff, Maradona and Pele."
Former England manager Sir Bobby Robson in 1986, "With Maradona, Arsenal could have won the World Cup."
Welsh footballer Robbie Savage: "I am not Pele or Maradona."
Jurgen Klinsmann: "One player that I always admired was Maradona. To me, he was an artist on the field. Everything he did was full of creativity and full of fun."
England defender Phil Neal on an 18-year-old Maradona, "The kid is just unbelievable - he is the best I have ever seen."
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