A funeral home worker has reportedly been sacked for taking a picture of himself next to the open coffin of the late football legend, Diego Maradona.

The disturbing photo shows the worker posing next to the corpse with his thumbs up.

The man was tasked with preparing Maradona’s body for the wake when he reportedly took the selfie.

The owner of Sepelios Pinier funeral parlour confirmed to local media that the employee has been sacked.

The picture, which has been shared on social media, sparked outrage with an angry response from Twitter users.

One Twitter user wrote: “He should be stripped of his Argentinian citizenship. You don’t do something like this. Complete lack of respect.”

While another warned: “Don’t retweet it.”

The Argentina icon, who was the manager of Argentinian club side Gimnasia passed away aged 60 on Wednesday, November 25, after suffering a cardiac arrest in his home country.

An autopsy report said he died in his sleep after suffering heart failure, only two weeks after leaving hospital following surgery to remove a blood clot on his brain.

Medics also detected dilated cardiomyopathy, a medical condition in which the heart muscle becomes weakened and enlarged and cannot pump enough blood to the rest of the body.

On Thursday morning, Maradona’s coffin was brought to the presidential palace in Argentina to lie in state following the three-day national mourning declared by the Argentinian president Alberto Fernandez.