A Dios Mio

Diego Maradona is having a pretty good week. Two days after the Argentine Football Association appointed him coach of the country's national soccer team, Maradona, one the greatest footballers of all time--and the sport's most notorious cocaine abuser--celebrated his 48th birthday with three hundred of his closest friends, who just so happened to have established a church in his honor.  

"Ringing in the year D.D. 48 ("Despues," or "After" Diego), about 300 members of the mock soccer church held processions to their idol with relics that included a soccer ball with a crown of thorns and an oversized rosary with 34 beads--the number of goals Maradona scored for Argentina's national team," according to the Associated Press.

Established ten years ago in the Argentine port city of Rosario, the Church of Maradona has attracted more than 120,000 members around the world. 

Thankfully, they don't actually believe the god of Argentine soccer, or D10S as they call him, is an actual deity. They just treat him like one.

"Members honor June 22, 1986--when Maradona punched the ball into England's net with his hand in a disputed play he called 'the Hand of God'-- as the church's Easter."

Still, I guess there are worse ways for Maradona, who's been known to pal around with the likes of Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez and Madonna (the other Madonna), to spend his birthday. Here's how he's celebrated previous milestones: