WORLD SPORTS SCENE : Maradona Making Most of His News Off Playing Field

Diego Maradona does so many tricks with a soccer ball that his opponents often do not know whether he is coming or going. Now it appears as if he has a few off-the-field moves that leave his own team, Naples of the Italian League, similarly confused.

While Naples was preparing this week for Wednesday night’s game at home in the UEFA Cup against Wettingen of Switzerland, Maradona inexplicably missed two days of practice. Perhaps he was celebrating his 29th birthday, which was Monday. Then he missed the team’s pregame meeting, arriving less than a hour before the kickoff in his own car.

He was sent home by the team’s general manager, Luciano Moggi.

Trying to force a transfer to Marseille of the French First Division before the season, even though he is under contract to Naples until 1993, Maradona repeatedly postponed his flight from his home in Buenos Aires to Italy until after the start of the league season. The Italian League is expected to announce his punishment later this month.

Maradona already has been fined $7,200 by the league for criticizing a referee after a match last week. On the same day, he lost jewels and other valuable property reportedly worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in a Naples bank robbery.

Even so, Maradona, the world’s highest-paid soccer player, has chartered a jet to carry his teammates to his wedding next week in Argentina. They should not be too upset with him considering that they were able to beat Wettingen, 2-1, without him and advance to the UEFA Cup’s third round.

In the European Champions Cup Wednesday night, defending champion AC Milan of the Italian League lost for the first time in 14 games, 1-0, to Real Madrid before a crowd of 95,000 in Madrid. But AC Milan still advanced because it beat Real Madrid, 2-0, at home last month.

It was a miserable day all around for Madrid fans. The team’s most notorious supporters hid behind newspaper kiosks outside Santiago Bernabeu Stadium before the game and threw stones and bottles at Italian fans. But according to police reports, the hooligans misjudged the distance and hit other Madrid fans. About 40 were injured.

U.S. midfielder Hugo Perez, who scored the only goal in the victory over El Salvador at Tegucigalpa, Honduras, on Sept. 17, will miss the rematch Sunday at Fenton, Mo., a St. Louis suburb.

He suffered a groin injury while playing for a team in the French second division and was sorely missed in the United States’ scoreless tie Oct. 8 in Guatemala. U.S. Soccer Federation officials said that they believe Perez will return in time for the decisive match Nov. 19 against Trinidad and Tobago at Port of Spain, Trinidad.

If the United States ties or loses Sunday, it probably would have to win in Trinidad to qualify for next summer’s World Cup in Italy. If the United States wins Sunday, merely a tie in Trinidad would send it to the World Cup for the first time since 1950.

Thirteen U.S. track and field athletes arrived in Johannesburg, South Africa, Wednesday for a five-meet tour, which begins next Tuesday. A 14th U.S. athlete, discus thrower John Powell, is scheduled to join them Saturday.

Powell, who has won two bronze medals and a silver medal in Olympic competition, was part of a U.S. group that made a similar tour last fall. Athletes, coaches and administrators involved were suspended from two to 12 years by The Athletics Congress, which governs track and field in the United States. Athletes risk their eligibility when they compete in South Africa because of that country’s policies of racial separation.

Other U.S. athletes who returned to South Africa this year include shotputter Dave Laut, middle distance runner James Robinson, pole vaulter Tom Hintnaus, long jumper Tyrus Jefferson and hurdler Milan Stewart. Two U.S. athletes, distance runner Ray Wicksell and javelin thrower Tom Petranoff, moved to South Africa after last year’s tour. Petranoff, a former world record-holder, operates a recreation center near Johannesburg.

The best-known athlete among those making their first trip to South Africa is shotputter Gregg Tafralis, who represented the United States in the 1988 Olympic Games at Seoul.

At a news conference in Johannesburg Wednesday, the U.S. tour leader, Dick Tomlinson, was asked about the substandard sports facilities for blacks in the country. “It’s based on economics,” he said. “Where you have a tax base, you have nice schools, nice houses, nice churches, nice tracks. Where you don’t, you don’t. It’s the same in America.”

Dr. Manfred Donike of Cologne, West Germany, recognized as the world’s leading innovator in testing for anabolic steroids, has endorsed his controversial new method for use in international sports.

At the International Olympic Committee’s First World Congress on Sport Sciences in Colorado Springs, Donike said Wednesday that his latest method can detect use of steroids from six weeks to three months before a test. In comparison, current procedures can detect steroid use from two to six weeks before a test. He said that his method eventually can be refined to detect steroid use from four to five months before a test.

Called fingerprinting, the method employs a hormone profile of an athlete. When the testosterone level is depressed, it indicates that the athlete has used steroids. There are two drawbacks. The test cannot determine the specific steroid used. It also does not work with women.

Donike conducted the test on an experimental basis last year at Seoul and later reported that 55 of the 1,110 male athletes tested were steroid-users.

The only sport so far to adopt the method is weightlifting.

If a bill proposed by Senator Joseph Biden Jr. (D-Del.) becomes law, anabolic steroids would be placed in the same category as cocaine, a Schedule II controlled substance.

Under Biden’s proposal, the Drug Enforcement Administration would have authority to investigate steroid trafficking; the penalty for trafficking would increase from a maximum of three years in prison to 20, and tight production quotas would be imposed.

Steroids currently are considered “prescription drugs” and are regulated by the Food and Drug Administration.

There is little question that Christopher Bowman of Van Nuys is the world’s most talented figure skater among men still competing internationally. Most dedicated? That is another question. But he always manages to quiet his critics.

Now training in Blue Jay, at Lake Arrowhead, Bowman recently was visited by monitors from the U.S. Figure Skating Assn. They suspected him of being out of shape because they’d heard that he had not performed a triple axel since last winter’s World Championships. But if they had any thoughts of removing him from the U.S. team at Skate America two weeks ago in Indianapolis, they forgot about them when Bowman showed them a perfect triple axel.

Bowman went on to win Skate America. World champion Kurt Browning of Canada finished third.

Two U.S. women have won international competitions within the last two weeks. Tonya Harding, third in the United States last year, upset national champion Jill Trenary at Skate America. That revived talk that Trenary either would or should move on to an ice show. Kristi Yamaguchi, runner-up to Trenary last year, won at Skate Canada last weekend.

Yamaguchi’s victory was popular in Canada. She is spending half of each week in Edmonton, where her coach, Christy Kjarsgaard, moved after last year’s World Championships. Yamaguchi returns home to the Bay Area to train with her pairs partner, Rudi Galindo.

Against all odds, Israel advanced within a couple of goals of the World Cup. But after losing, 1-0, in Colombia, the two teams played to a scoreless tie Monday in Tel Aviv. As a result, Colombia advanced.

Israel has been a country without a continent in soccer since 1976, when Kuwait managed to have it expelled from the Asian group for political reasons. Europe refused to admit Israel for security reasons.

Assigned to Oceania, Israel beat Australia and New Zealand. But it then had to clear a final hurdle against a South American team. Israel did not survive that test but earned respect worldwide for its resiliency.

Israel faced similar ostracism in track and field until recently, when it was accepted by Europe. Israel probably will send athletes to the European Championships for the first time next summer.