The Hand of God

Lore & Background

The goal's name derives from Maradona's initial response when asked whether he scored it legally. He said it was 'a little with the head of Maradona and a little with the hand of God'. Later, Maradona acknowledged he had illegally handled the ball, saying he considered the goal 'symbolic revenge' for the United Kingdom's defeat of Argentina in the 1982 Falklands War. Six minutes into the second half, Maradona took the ball out of the box with his left leg and passed it to Jorge Valdano. Valdano tried to take on several English defenders, but the ball was intercepted, thrown back and forth, and kicked toward England's goal by English midfielder Steve Hodge. Because of the players' positions, Maradona would have been caught offside, but as the ball came off an opponent, there was no offside offence. Alone inside the penalty box and with the ball dropping down, Maradona contested the ball with goalkeeper Peter Shilton, who stood 20 centimetres (8 inches) taller than Maradona. Shilton jumped forward with his right hand, while Maradona did so with his left arm outstretched. Maradona's fist, raised close to his head, struck the ball first, causing it to loop over Shilton and into the net. Maradona began to celebrate while glancing sideways at the referee and the linesman for confirmation. He fully celebrated the goal when it was given. Although the Tunisian referee Ali Ben Nasser initially gave the goal, protests from the English players made him seek advice from his second linesman, who confirmed it. Mexican photographer Alejandro Ojeda Carbajal captured the moment in a photograph that unequivocally shows Maradona handling the ball with his left hand moments before scoring.

In Their Own Story

The floodlights at the Azteca hummed like a living thing, painting the green in shades of emerald and gold. Maradona stood over the free-kick, his white number 10 kit slightly creased, his eyes already looking past the wall, past the defenders, past the goalkeeper, to a point in the net that only he could see. The crowd — sixty thousand souls in a bowl of concrete and noise — held its breath as one. He touched the ball. It rolled. And then he was gone, sliding between bodies like smoke through a doorway, each defender's outstretched hand catching only air. The net rippled. The stadium detonated. And somewhere in the England bench, a captain buried his face in his hands, knowing that in ninety minutes of football, the one thing he could not defend against had just walked past him, unhurried, smiling, and scored the greatest goal the world had ever seen. The handball would be argued about for decades. This goal would not need arguing. It simply was.

Reader's Guide

In 2005, Maradona admitted on the Argentinean television program La Noche del 10 that he had scored the goal with his hand. Several world media outlets reported Maradona's confession, while Peter Shilton rejected the apology, saying it was too late. In the 2019 documentary film Diego Maradona directed by Asif Kapadia, Maradona links the event to the Falklands War four years earlier. In 2017, Ivan Lopez-Muniz wrote that, in Argentina, the 'entire nation', including the Government and the Argentine Football Association, still 'praises the most blatant act of cheating ever caught on tape', partly because of a long history of Argentine grievances against the UK. Other football observers have called the goal a physical embodiment of viveza criolla (roughly, 'native cunning'), a philosophy commonly associated with South America that more or less justifies the path taken to succeed even if it is unfair. The 'Hand of God' became a popular phrase and is still used around the world. Some other famous football handballs include: In a first-round match of the 1990 World Cup between Argentina and the Soviet Union, a Soviet attack failed when Maradona intercepted the ball with his hand without the referee noticing. In the 2004 AFC Asian Cup Final between China and Japan, Koji Nakata scored Japan's second goal by hand and it stood. During a league match against Espanyol on 9 June 2007, Argentinian Barcelona player Lionel Messi scored by launching himself at the ball and striking it with his hand in a fashion similar to Maradona's Hand of God goal. During the final minutes of the second leg of the play-off for the 2010 World Cup between Ireland and France, William Gallas scored the decisive goal from a Thierry Henry assist that gave France a 2–1 aggregate victory; replays showed Henry repeatedly centering the ball with his hands moments before passing. Uruguayan footballer Luis Suárez illegally stopped a likely goal from Ghanaian Dominic Adiyiah with his hand in the quarter-finals of the 2010 FIFA World Cup; Suárez was shown the red card, but Ghana missed the resulting penalty kick, and Uruguay defeated Ghana in a penalty shoot-out; at the subsequent press conference, Suárez said he had used the 'Hand of God'. On 11 February 2020, in Group G of the 2020 AFC Cup, Joshua Grommen of Ceres-Negros F.C. scored the second goal of its game against Preah Khan Reach Svay Rieng FC by

Did You Know?

• After the game, Maradona swapped his shirt in the tunnel with Steve Hodge. After many years of requests to sell the shirt and a period of 20 years where it was on loan at the National Football Museum, in 2022 Hodge place
• The match ball Maradona used to score the goal was offered for auction in November 2020, at Graham Budd Auctions, but failed to sell, despite a bid of £2m. The ball was the property of Tunisian match referee Ali Ben Nass