This is a fairly sporty website, marketing men (and women) would probably label us as 'outdoors types' or something, so I can probably take it for granted that a large proportion of you have participated in University/College intramural sports programmes. For those of us who love our sport but just don't have the talent or in most cases energy to take it more seriously, intramural sport quenches our cravings once a week as we battle away against similarly lazy people. The half time team talk is usually more concerned about the team social that night rather than why the score is 0-2 but hey, you don't have to train 6 times a week at 4am so you can't expect fireworks on the pitch.

Earlier this year a group of friends and I decided to take intramural sport a little more seriously. Our love of Argentinian football and Joga Bonita (The Beautiful game) spurring us on, we decided to creat Club Athletico Las Nuevas Maradonas. We have modelled ourselves exactly upon players who have been called the new Diego Maradona by the Argentinian media. Maradona being the greatest football player who ever lived - Pele is an over-rated, talentless swine. So we all picked a 'new Maradona' and began to learn that player's intracicies. While other teams turn up to games wearing a melange of kit, we have all purchased full 2006 Argentina World Cup replica kits, including towels, warm up clothing and personalised boots. But we are not only concerned with aesthetics... We aim to play like Argentinians too - cheating, diving, slow build up play, delicate link ups and scoring the perfect goal are all extremely important to us. Such underhand tactics and frankly ridiculous style of play for the conditions (badly maintained pitches in the English winter) have drawn some strange looks. But our results have told a different story, two wins out of three so far this season. And we are sitting pretty at the top of the league. Still, most people do not understand our obsession.

This is all well and good. But no sports team is complete without a summer sports tour. Excessive intake of illegal substances, flings with the local women, arrests, deportations and the odd game of football. Most English football teams would tour Holland taking in the sights of Amsterdam, or for the more adventurous South Africa. Somewhere not too ridiculous or expensive. Luckily for Club Athletico Las Neuvas Maradonas, the British government has supplied us (along with most students in the UK) a University student loan each, totalling tens of thousands of pounds. Usually such loans would be used to pay for education, however it is this government money that we will be using to undertake our tour of South America in 2007. The itinerary is rough at the moment, as like most things it will be left until the last minute. All we know is that flights to Rio De Janiero are cheaper than to Buenos Aires and I can drive long distances (that's the Mongol Rally for you). So hopefully, we will be flying into Rio, playing a few friendly games against local sides. We will then hire/buy a reliable and comfortable team bus before driving to Sao Paulo, then taking in Iguazu falls, driving through Uruguay to our destination Buenos Aires where the real tour will start - about 3 weeks after arriving. This we have realised is completely impractical and unrealistic, which is perfect.

We will be adding a charity aspect to the tour, hopefully teaching deprived street urchins how to play football. Maybe Adidas will sponsor us, maybe the BBC will commission a film to be made. Maybe.

In the meantime, if you still do not understand the concept of Club Athletico Las Nuevas Maradonas (I'm still struggling) then please visit our website www.lasnuevasmaradonas.com

Joga Bonita

James R-D (a.k.a Ariel Ortega #10)