The late signing is bound to turn the celebrity kickabout into a grudge match, when the week's programming culminates in a match at Old Trafford between England and the Rest of the World.

As well as Maradona, the Rest of the World side . . . captained by fiery chef Gordon Ramsay . . . contains four Irishmen. Eddie Irvine, Craig Doyle, Brian McFadden and Patrick Kielty will line out alongside former players like David Ginola, Marcel Desailly and Gianfranco Zola.

The event, which will raise funds for Unicef, will see ITV pitching directly against Channel 4's Big Brother for the first time. Coming off the bench to present the nightly updates from the training camps are Ant and Dec, who front ITV's hugely successful reality show, I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here. It's a significant investment for the network, which has been running high profile promos and previews of the show for a month.

"I saw one during the Champions League final the other night, " says Dubliner Craig Doyle. "I heard myself saying that I can't think about it because it makes me want to throw up. When I heard it, it made me want to throw up even more."

He's not the only participant experiencing sleepless nights at the prospect of running out on the turf at Old Trafford next weekend.

Luckily, the two teams are all sharing their insomnia in a London hotel, where they're billeted for the duration of the show. "That part of it isn't filmed, " says Doyle, "you couldn't film that. Eddie Irvine's on the team."

He confesses he almost got cold feet when he heard about 'the big sleepover' . . . "I swore all my career that I would never do reality TV, but it's not interactive with the public; it's not Big Brother on a soccer pitch" . . . but he confesses the prospect of playing against England brought out the fantasy footballer in him.

"For a bloke, this is dream stuff. We're totally living the life, bar the swimming pools.

It's a totally professional setup. Jamie Redknapp says it feels like he's joined a new club."

Joining Redknapp on the England side will be former footballers like Paul Gascoigne, John Barnes and David Seaman and celebrities like Angus Deayton, Jamie Theakston and, inexplicably, Welshman David Gray.

But for Doyle and the rest of the Rest of the World, they're English enough.

"Playing England throws up a whole complexity of history.

Even seeing the kit is enough to get most of us fired up."