Football sponsorship is an expensive business and not many provincial law firms expect to see their proud brand emblazoned across the chest of a World Cup-winning captain.

Leeds corporate and commercial outfit The Needle Partnership appears to have managed it, however. The firm has signed a one-year deal to sponsor Garforth Town, who presently lie a modest 13th in the Unibond First Division North.

No, there is no truth in the rumour that Diego Maradona is coming out of retirement to pick up his career in industrial West Yorkshire. One man who is, though, is Marcos Evangelista de Moraes, otherwise known as Cafu (pictured), who won the World Cup with Brazil in 1994 and 2002.

Football legend Cafu is best remembered among fans as ‘The Express Train’, a tribute to his startling velocity while haring down the wing for the likes of Roma, AC Milan – and now Garforth.

The Unibond League is not exactly awash with Bentleys, Bolly and bling, so how did Garforth pull off this remarkable coup? Well, club owner Simon Clifford is the founder of a Leeds-based chain of Brazilian soccer schools and has rather good contacts over in Rio. Previous celebrity signings at the Genix Healthcare Stadium include Socrates – lavishly bearded scion of Brazil’s 1982 vintage – and striker Careca.

Sharon Needle, who is dual qualified as both a Malaysia barrister and solicitor in England & Wales, said: ‘We are delighted to be able to offer our support to a local team with big plans for its future. We know that, like us, they are very ambitious.’

Obiter’s editor, incidentally, has the misfortune to be a Leeds United supporter. If Cafu wants to swap his deck chair on the Copacabana for a draughty changing room in south Leeds, the Gazette reckons the elfin maestro ought to go and play at Elland Road instead.