Which Scots secular saints would get the Maradona treatment?

An indication of the esteem in which Maradona, who inspired Argentina to the 1986 World Cup, is held is in his nickname El Pibe d'Oro, the golden boy. Another is the way in which his name is often stylised, combining his shirt number with the Spanish word for God - D10s.

Perhaps part of his nation's almost religious devotion to Maradona stems from the fact his coming was prophesised.

In 1928 the sports publication El Gráfico attempted to describe the archetypal Argentine footballer.

They wrote he would be "a pibe [urchin] with a dirty face, a mane of hair rebelling against the comb; with intelligent, roving, trickster and persuasive eyes and a sparkling gaze that seem to hint at a picaresque laugh that does not quite manage to form on his mouth, full of small teeth that might be worn down through eating yesterday’s bread.

Diego Maradona (Image: AFP/Getty Images) “His trousers are a few roughly sewn patches; his vest with Argentinian stripes, with a very low neck and with many holes eaten out by the invisible mice of use … His knees covered with the scabs of wounds disinfected by fate; barefoot or with shoes whose holes in the toes suggest they have been made through too much shooting. His stance must be characteristic; it must seem as if he is dribbling with a rag ball.”

If his coming wasn't quite foretold in the biblical sense, divine allusions were never far away.

The 2001 Argentine comedy film Son of the Bride sees one character disguised as a priest. Talking to a barman he says "they idolised him, then they crucified him". His co-conspirator, overhearing, takes him aside to warn him he's taking the ruse to far.

"But I was talking about Maradona," comes the reply.

Maradona is similarly revered in Naples, where he led the city's team to two Serie A titles and a UEFA Cup.

His likeness is everywhere, on market stalls and the sides of buildings, down back alleys and in the main train station. The stadium in which he once played is now named for him and one café, Bar Nilo, boasts a shrine to El Diego complete with strands of his hair, allegedly lifted from the headrest after its owner sat next to his hero on a flight.

The people of Naples mourn Diego Maradona (Image: AFP/Getty Images) He's fondly remembered in Scotland, too, thanks to his towering header against England in the 1986 World Cup, which he followed up with the 'Goal of the Century' which saw him dribble past half of Bobby Robson's team before poking the ball into the net.

Maradona, though, is far from the only 'secular saint' afforded the treatment traditionally reserved for the holy.

When Vladimir Lenin, the founding father of the Soviet Union, died in January 1924 around a million people queued in freezing Moscow temperatures to pay their last respects.

Following his funeral his body was embalmed and displayed in Red Square, where he rests to this day, 100 years later.

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His successor, Joseph Stalin, was afforded the same treatment when he died but following Nikita Kruschev's 'secret speech' his body was removed from Lenin's mausoleum and buried in the outer walls of the Kremlin.

At St Stephen's Basilica in Budapest you'll find the mummified right hand of the titular saint, the founder of the Hungarian nation.

Also interred beneath its dome is Ferenc Puskás, the country's greatest footballer who helped inspire them to a World Cup final and scored four times at Hampden for Real Madrid in what is regularly cited as the greatest ever European Cup final.

Ferenc Puskás (Image: Getty Images) His funeral was declared a day of national mourning, with tens of thousands taking to the streets and the national stadium renamed in his honour.

On the whole, this isn't really the kind of thing we tend to do in the UK.

When Queen Elizabeth died there was an extended period of national mourning and a quarter of a million people filing sombrely past her coffin but you don't tend to hear about people gathering at the King George VI chapel to weep over dear departed Lizzie.

Are there people so beloved of the Scottish nation that they'd be given such remembrance?

Billy Connolly springs to mind: when the Big Yin leaves us we could inter him inside a big banana foot, after creating a magnificent mausoleum by the banks of the Clyde where he once worked on the ships. He'd surely appreciate the dark irony of the Clydeside regeneration jokes which would surely follow.

If Puskás and Maradona can get the treatment then what about own greatest sportsman, Andy Murray? A Lorraine Kelly memorial in Dundee, perhaps?

It doesn't really seem in the national character, and it's fair to ask whether you'd actually want the 'Maradona treatment'.

Nadezhda Krupskaya, Lenin's widow, was staunchly opposed to his embalming and display after his death, so much so that she wrote to the politburo urging them "not to turn your grief for Lenin into worshipping his personality. It was a burden for him while he was alive".

Stalin, who was quite into the old personality worship, decided to do it anyway.

Puskás was shunned by Hungary after he fled to the west in 1956, his name taboo in the state-controlled media. He would only return in 1981, visiting the graves of his parents in Kispest - his mother had died with her son in exile and he'd never visited hers before.

Buried with the saints he may be, but it's not all so dignified. In Budapest airport you can buy officially licenced Puskás beach towels, while Hungary's authoritarian leader Viktor Orbán has set up a football team bearing his name, playing in a two-star UEFA stadium, in his own hometown. The stadium, which lies just metres from Orbán's family estate, has a capacity of just under 4,000 while the population of Felcsút is around 1,600.

Then there's Maradona himself.

From the age of 15 his skill with a ball made his family financially reliant on him, their way out of the shanty town in which he was raised.

(Image: AFP/Getty Images)

In Naples he carried the hopes and dreams of one of Italy's most impoverished cities on his shoulders, one famous incident seeing an entire street locked down as his adoring fans swarmed a bowling alley having heard Napoli's number 10 was inside.

For Argentina he was a light in the dark of a brutal military dictatorship, his two goals against England seen as some kind of late counter-punch in the Falklands war.

Maradona's former team-mate Jorge Valdano said his retirement left the nation "traumatised", explaining "Maradona offered to Argentines a way out of their collective frustration, and that's why people there love him as a divine figure".

It's no stretch to suggest his well-documented problems with substance abuse were not helped by those who'd be willing to enable him, just to be in his presence.

In contrast to the chaotic scenes as he lay in state, Maradona was buried beside his parents in a quiet family ceremony.

It seems, though, that even in death there will be no peace.