'Leave Messi alone and don't compare him to me'

"I think Messi is fantastic, all the journalists have to do is leave him alone, and stop comparing him," Maradona said, speaking with CNN. "Leave him be, let him do his job." 

Maradona then revealed a conversation that he had had with the president of the Argentinian Football Association. "The problem isn't Messi, it's the president of the AFA," he stated. "He made a mistake."

"He spoke with me, we were in agreement, I met him here in Dubai, and appointing Sampaoli shows a lack of respect for a lot of people."

The Boca Juniors legend defended the club's president Angelici. "If it wasn't for Angelici, Boca would now owe a lot of money to Macri. However, Angelici is someone who looks after his people, he wants to make a much bigger stadium."

He also came out in favour of a new stadium for Boca. "Us who have box seats or a place on the pitch can't be so selfish to say 'the Bombonera shouldn't be touched'," he stated. "No, don't touch it, but let me make a stadium next to it with 120,000 seats, and everyone can go there."

Lastly, he spoke about his time on the touchline at UAE club Al Fujairah: "It's a very important time in my life, we are on the up with Al Fujairah, which is a small town near Dubai, and people are going crazy. The other teams are powerful, and us, not so much, but we have beaten more than a few of them."