FLAWED genius - it's a description that has doggedly attached itself to the shirt-tails of sport throughout history.

Think Jack Johnson (boxing), Hughie Gallacher (football), Ty Cobb (baseball), and more recently George Best (football), Mike Tyson (boxing) and Alex Higgins (snooker).

All were supremely gifted individuals and all were blessed with a talent that dazzled with a blinding light but for whom outside influences or personal demons dimmed their overall status. Icons with dirty faces.

Now the talent that is tarnished is smack back in the headlines this week with the news that Diego Armando Maradona is in hospital fighting for his life at the relatively young age of 43. Less than two decades after he straddled world football with a mercurial talent that left fans breathless, a bloated Maradona is reportedly stricken on a life-support machine.

And it could not be a more bizarre coincidence that in the same weekend as Argentina's greatest footballer fades, Paul Gascoigne, England's own genius gone wrong, revealed that he has given up all hope of ever playing football professionally again as clubs refuse to go near him with even an elongated barge-pole.

Since leaving Everton for an ill-fated fling in China, Gazza - it's funny how many geniuses are usually accorded a singular, all-encompassing epithet - has trawled his ability throughout various ports of call, but with not a single taker.

Lost horizons, lost opportunities and now lost in the wilderness.

At least Maradona touched the pinnacle of the game.

He held the World Cup aloft, notwithstanding the 'Hand of God' goal that so soured his status among England's dreaming fans.

After all, it was Steve Hodge's injudicious lofted back-pass that put the Argentine captain in an aerial one-on-one with goalkeeper Peter Shilton. The then England captain towered curly-headed and burly shoulders over Maradona and could legitimately use his hands, yet inexplicably, he was out-leapt and out-thought by his quicker-thinking opponent. While Shilton flapped a Mexican wave, Maradona flipped an Argy-bargy finger that condemned him to eternal English venom.

Far better surely to concentrate on that mesmeric second goal in that quarter-final encounter. Remember, the one where Maradona slalomed at speed from the half-way line through a retreating England defence. All left-foot and leaving all England's rearguard, and a good half of its midfield too, floundering. Sheer genius.

That Maradona's career was subsequently submerged in a flood of controversy, fuelled by excess and enough exotic substances to have kept Colombia's main export thriving, merely adds to the myth of the master consumed by demons.

For all that we love our heroes - Pel, Steve Davis, Lennox Lewis, the late and great John Charles, all thoroughly deserving to be lavishly lauded - we simply cannot do without those sporting idols who test our patience, loyalty and trust with their excesses.

There is something of the night about those with feat of clay that excites as well as exasperates. The lower they sink, the greater their ability can seem.

But there's another aspect to the treatment afforded heroes who go bad and it's not just the peculiarly English game of knocking down occupants standing upon a pedestal.

Their various, in some cases nefarious, exploits pander to a basic desire of those who can only marvel at sheer talent. Discovering that those blessed with greatness can yet be reduced to being mere mortals offers the less gifted a certain consolation, if not compensation.

It's less of a Faustian pact on the heroes' behalf, than a Freudian act on the part of us, the spectator. Come on, we chide, they can't have all the wealth, status and talent to boot. Come on, we chivvy, that's just not fair. So we can gloat, or can chant 'I told you so', or just tut-tut with a self-satisfied smirk borne out of envy when another of the damaged elite frays at the edges.

No more heroes, who are you kidding?

Updated: 11:33 Tuesday, April 20, 2004