£7m for a shirt well worth it

■ THE £7.1million that someone paid for Diego Maradona’s shirt at auction last week was slightly out of my reach but that doesn’t mean I don’t think of the mystery buyer as a kindred spirit.

I paid a few hundred quid for a pair of shorts worn by one of my boyhood heroes Norman Whiteside at the 1982 World Cup at an auction during the pandemic and they gaze at me lovingly from the frame that houses them, a snapshot of my youth, a prompt for a flood of happy memories.