Problems with alcohol and Cuban cigars have put Diego Maradona back under medical supervision in the latest health scare to sully the retirement of the Argentina football legend.

The 46-year-old Maradona who led Argentina to their second World Cup triumph in 1986, was taken to a Buenos Aires clinic by ambulance on Wednesday night. “There have been excesses not only of food but also alcohol and he is smoking three cigars a day,” Alfredo Cahe, his personal doctor, said.

A statement released by doctors added that Maradona’s medical condition was not related to any problems with hard drugs, to which he has been addicted in the past. He has also suffered from obesity.

Cahe said that Maradona initially resisted advice to attend the clinic and was “depressed because of personal problems”. Local media reported that Maradona had argued with his former wife, Claudia Villafane, who oversaw his recovery from cocaine addiction in 2004 and is now his business manager.

In 2000, Maradona nearly died of a cocaine overdose while in Uruguay and he spent most of the next four years in a clinic in Cuba as a guest of Fidel Castro, the President, undergoing rehabilitation.

His family always suspected that the clinic’s programme was too lax and, when he returned to Buenos Aires in 2004, Maradona was hugely overweight. That April, he was admitted to intensive care amid rumours of another drug overdose. Maradona checked himself out of hospital 12 days later, only to be readmitted within days after a relapse.

A slimmed-down Maradona looked to have put the worst of his health problems behind him in August 2005 when he made a triumphant return to the spotlight with a television chat show, which was a hit in Latin America. He even returned to the pitch, becoming a regular participant in charity football matches.

But there have been fears that, having conquered cocaine addiction, Maradona was drinking too much. Last December, the Argentine media reported that a trip to Moscow in support of his country’s Davis Cup team turned into a drunken spree through the city’s casinos and nightclubs, with Maradona frequently exhibiting boorish behaviour.

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