Maradona drug free for “six years”

Argentina coach Diego Maradona, whose off-field problems earned him as many column inches as his on-field brilliance, says he has not touched drugs for six years.

After serving drug bans as well as being dogged by the Italian taxman Maradona has reinvented himself as a coach and told Argentine television he is now clean.

“Ten days ago I completed six years without taking drugs and today I value everything I have,” Maradona said in an interview on Sunday night.

“If I regret anything it is not having been at the side of Claudia (Villafane, his former wife) to see my daughters grow up,” said the 49-year-old who just led Argentina into the World Cup finals by the skin of their teeth following an infuriatingly inconsistent campaign.

Maradona’s love of the high life saw him seriously ill by 2004, when he suffered a heart attack and then a bout of alcohol-induced hepatitis in 2007 before gradually winning his battles with addiction.