Diego Maradona Struggles To Complete A Word In Post-Match Interview

Diego Maradona, historically great soccer player and current malfunctioning animated museum exhibit, appears to be in the midst of a simultaneously good and bad experience in Mexico. The good: he is the manager of second-division club Dorados, and after taking charge of the struggling group in September, has overseen such a reversal of the team’s fortunes that they’re now in the league’s title-deciding playoff game. The bad: he looks to have forgotten how to speak.

In an interview from last Wednesday, after Dorados beat Juárez 2-0 in the first leg of the Ascenso MX semifinal, Maradona was asked a simple question about the quality of Mexico’s first division. For an uncomfortably long time, Maradona couldn’t muster much more than “Uhhhhhhhh...”:

As you can see in the extended clip of that interview (and from this separate interview from the same day), even when Maradona’s lips were able to sputter out words, his speech was still troublingly slurry and halting:

This isn’t the first time this year Maradona has given an interview and sounded like he was under the effects of horse tranquilizers:

Is it the side effects of some medication meant to manage his severely arthritic knee, or just the way Diego talks when he’s bored with an interview? Whatever’s going on doesn’t seem to have affected his dancing and singing skills much, so maybe he’s fine after all: