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Diego Maradona was close to dying in 2004 but now his clever man-management can lead Argentina to a third World Cup

There were candlelit vigils not just outside the hospital in Buenos Aires but around the world. After spending 12 days in critical care with heart and lung problems, Diego Armando Maradona was lying among the patients in a psychiatric ward while his family argued about further treatment. "They were all crazy in there," he later recalled. "One guy said he was Napoleon and they didn't believe him. I said I was Maradona and they didn't believe me, either."

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Even at this final stage of its rebirth as the head coach of Argentina 'is the story of a year. If he is going to lead his team three more wins and to see his captain, Javier Mascherano, the trophy that he raised up in 1986, it will forever be regarded as one of the most remarkable response in the history of sports.

Few imagined that the mission would achieve its aim. At that point the sum total of Maradona's coaching experience amounted to 23 matches in charge of Deportivo Mandiyú of Corrientes and Racing Club of Buenos Aires. The first, in 1994, ended in relegation and the second, the following year, in chaos. So no one knew what to expect when he was suddenly appointed to take over from Alfio Basile midway through the World Cup qualifying campaign, except the near-certainty of further chaos.

In Glasgow he was asked if he would be indulging in the sort of antics seen from him at the 2006 World Cup in Germany when, in a rather grotesque sideshow, he became a sort of cheerleader to the team. "It depends on how the team are playing," he said. "If they're making me feel safe and sound, I'll be fine. If they're making me nervous, then maybe I'll behave like you saw in Germany."

His team won their first three matches, but a 6-1 defeat at the hands of Bolivia at 3,657 metres (12,000ft) in La Paz â€" as heavy as any in Argentina's history â€" left them lying fifth in the 10-team Conmebol group, from which four countries would qualify automatically. It was for the next game, a 1-0 victory at home to Colombia, that he courted ridicule by bringing the then 34-year-old Juan Sebastián Verón into the starting line-up, and after three further defeats they were still stranded in fifth place, with two matches to play.

There were only 38,000 spectators in Buenos Aires's Monumental stadium, which holds almost twice that number, when Argentina played Peru in the first of those crucial fixtures last October, but those who had kept faith were rewarded with a moment of matchless melodrama amid a rainstorm of tropical proportions.

After Martín Palmero, the veteran Boca Juniors striker, had come off the bench to score the winner in the second minute of stoppage time, Maradona celebrated victory with a belly-slide along the sodden touchline. Four days later, after Mario Bolatti, another late substitute, had scored in the 84th minute in Montevideo to secure victory over Uruguay and the final automatic qualifying place, he directed an obscene tirade at the media.

For that outburst he received a two-month ban from all football activity and a fine of 25,000 Swiss francs (£15,400) from Fifa. His critics were given further ammunition when his squad for South Africa contained neither Esteban Cambiasso nor Javier Zanetti, two vastly experienced internationals who had just helped José Mourinho's Internazionale win the Champions League. Together with Maradona's preference for the ageing Verón over Juan Román Riquelme, the widely adored playmaker who has never been included in his selections, this was seen as a further sign of his unfitness for the job of leading Argentina to their first World Cup victory since his own annus mirabilis of 1986.

The method to his apparent madness has become apparent over the past three weeks. "What Maradona did first when he took over," an Argentinian journalist said this week, "was to nominate the key man in his side. That was Mascherano. He actually said, 'The team will be Mascherano and 10 others.' And when he selected the squad of 23 to go to South Africa, he divided it very clearly into two: there would be the 11 players of the side, plus 12 supporters."

Another significant piece of man-management has taken place at the tournament, and has involved Lionel Messi, by general consent the best player of his generation, as Maradona once was. Their relationship was sticky at the start, the head coach seeming to believe â€" like the majority of his compatriots â€" that Messi's heart belongs to Barcelona, where he was taken at the age of 13, rather than to Argentina.

Since arriving in South Africa, however, Maradona has taken every opportunity to sing the praises of his latest heir to the No10 shirt, speaking not only of his talent but of his charisma and serenity. When Mascherano was rested, for the third group match against Greece, the 23-year-old Messi was given the captain's armband.

After the 3-1 win over Mexico, Maradona repeated his frequent call for referees to provide better protection for his new favourite. "Whenever Messi has the ball everyone is trying to kick his legs," he said. "What is being done to him is a scandal. I lived through that 20 years ago. I understand why the Mexicans did it, but there is a limit to everything."

What the reporters were not allowed to see was the real work going on, including the meticulous preparation of the set-piece routines that delivered the team's first three goals of the tournament. A group of assistants including Héctor Enrique, who likes to remind people that it was he who passed Maradona the ball to start the run for that second goal against England 24 years ago, are earning their money while the head coach astutely absorbs the attention and deflects the pressure.

The contrast with other coaches at this World Cup is almost hilariously vivid. But then none of them has lived a life remotely like his. It is as though everything in Maradona's 49 years, the bad and the good, the sublime and the reprehensible, has been leading up to this, and he is not going to let it go now.