“We are all over the world right now,” Al Wasl Football Company chief Ashraf Ahmed Mohammed told www.sport360.com website on Sunday. 

“The coverage has been incredible. In the three years that we have been professional, many coaches have approached us with big CVs but I haven’t seen anything like this.

“I think this is the talk of the world.”

He added: “We’ve had a lot of calls from different players wanting to join Al Wasl, but we don’t want our excitement to overshadow reality. We will need quality and not quantity.”

Maradona, the 1986 World Cup winning captain, will take charge of the seven-times UAE league winners next month.

It will be his first coaching role since guiding Argentina to the quarter-finals of the 2010 World Cup and his goal will be to help them become the top team in Asia.

“For previous coaches we were only paying and not gaining, but with Maradona it’s the other way around,” Mohammed said.

“There has to be professionalism, everything has to be professional and in place. Maradona says he doesn’t want to be No. 2, only No. 1, and we have to be optimistic and pragmatic.

“We know we want to be the best and must work towards that goal to be No. 1, not only in the UAE but in Asia as well.”

Mohammed added Maradona would get whatever resource he needed to achieve that goal.

“We have to find the right tools and that will depend on him. We don’t have an issue with him buying players or bringing his coaching staff along because these are some of the things he asked for before,” he said.