The Argentine legend Diego Maradona arrived on Monday in Brest, in western Belarus, where he was appointed president of the Dinamo local club and stated that he wanted to meet the Belarusian head of state, Aleksandr Lukashenko.
"I remember very well Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez, Muammar Gaddafi, I also know Vladimir Putin and today I want to take a picture with Lukashenko. I hope that after that, he becomes our fan," declared the former captain of the Argentine national team in a press conference.
Ensuring that his project was "very serious," Maradona said he hoped his presence in Dinamo Brest, a first division club, would be "useful for Belarusian football" and allow him to "improve day by day."
"We will try to put together a team that fights for the top positions" of the championship, continued the World Cup champion in Mexico-1986.
Maradona will attend his first game as president of Dinamo Brest on Monday night. The team, currently in sixth place in the Belarusian championship when half of the tournament is played, will host Chaktior Soligorsk, fourth in the standings.
The Argentine, who clarified that he plans to learn the Russian language, seems willing to get involved in Belarus, ensuring that he is not afraid of the country's winter.
"When I was a child, I didn't have shoes, I went barefoot, that's why I'm not afraid of snow. I can live without any problem in Belarus," affirmed the former midfielder of Naples, who spent the last month in Russia following the 2018 World Cup.
Maradona left last month the position of coach of the Emirati club Al-Fujairah SC, in the second division of the United Arab Emirates tournament.
In Brest, the former Argentine coach will supervise "the strategic development" of the club, bought by new owners who sought a way to give impetus to the entity they have been managing for three years.
AFP
