Keeping Score

Why Maradona Wears Two Watches

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Argentina has to be the most entertaining team in this tournament. The team has exceeded the country’s tapered expectations, and played beautifully in group play. Argentina finished with three straight wins, the latest a 2-0 victory of Greece. Both Lionel Messi, and his floppy mane, are awesome. And watching coach Diego Maradona’s sideline mania – his fist-pumping, his kiss-blowing, his unkempt facial hair – is a spectator sport in itself.

And if you’re like me, you’re asking yourself – why in the world does Maradona wear not one, but two watches? I mean, during a high-stakes World Cup soccer match, does the time of day matter all that much? Luckily, Yahoo! Sports has the answer, and it’s perfectly, well, Maradonian:

“Maradona always wears two watches when he travels – one set to local time and one set to the time back in Argentina. Plus, as a man of extravagant taste (he also wears large diamond earrings and, of course, has a special expensive toilet seat installed in his hotel bathroom), Maradona also has a taste for fancy watches. A taste that the Italian tax authorities have enjoyed as a means of recouping a bit of the $39 million in back taxes he owes from when lived there while playing for Napoli. In 2006, they seized a pair of Rolexes from Maradona while he visited Naples for a charity match.”

May Maradona, and his time-zone appropriate watches, advance far in the knockout round (Argentina plays Mexico on Sunday)