Desperate to return to Cuba after a major health scare, soccer great Diego Maradona wants Argentine President Nestor Kirchner to help free him from a psychiatric clinic where he is being held against his will for drug addiction.

"He wants to go to Cuba but the courts won't let him," his doctor Alfredo Cahe told Radio 10 on Friday. "He wants me to talk with the President so he sees the extent of his recovery and what he is capable of doing when asked."

Maradona's family forced him to enter a private clinic on the outskirts of Buenos Aires in May for cocaine addiction treatment after he was rushed to intensive care in April with a swollen heart and breathing problems.

Maradona, 43, has spent much of the past four years undergoing a drugs rehabilitation programme at a spa in Cuba, which he considers a second home. He is less enamoured with the Argentine clinic he is currently trapped in.

"In this clinic one person thinks they are Napoleon, another thinks he is (liberation hero) General San Martin ... And they don't believe I'm Maradona," the former World Cup winner told relatives during a recent visit, according to local sports daily Ole.

President Kirchner's office was non-committal, saying no formal request had yet been received from the former World Cup winner -- considered one of the most gifted players in the history of soccer.