Maradona's Hand of God still defines Argentina's 1986 England clash

For one BBC journalist making a first football outing, Argentina’s 2-1 victory over England delivered the kind of match that never leaves the sport. At the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City on 22 June 1986, 114,580 spectators watched Diego Maradona, then 25 and Argentina’s captain, score both goals in a quarter-final that still divides football between cheating, genius and myth.

The first goal came from an illegal handball against England goalkeeper Peter Shilton and was later christened the Hand of God. Maradona’s touch escaped referee Ali Bin Nasser, and the goal instantly became more than a mistake or a trick of the light. It arrived four years after the Falklands War, giving Argentina’s rivalry with England an extra political charge that made every challenge, whistle and decision feel larger than the tournament itself.

Then, four minutes later, Maradona produced the opposite kind of controversy: a goal so pure in movement that it became the standard by which World Cup brilliance is measured. He ran through England’s defense in a solo dribble that lasted 11 seconds before finishing the move himself. Fans later voted it FIFA’s Goal of the Century in 2002, placing the two strikes at opposite ends of football’s moral spectrum but in the same immortal frame.

Maradona’s own explanation sealed the legend. After the match, he described the handball as “a little with the head of Maradona and a little with the hand of God.” The line did what statistics alone could not: it turned a refereeing failure into folklore, and a foul into a phrase repeated far beyond Argentina and England.

Four decades on, FIFA still returns to the match through documentary and archive features because the game keeps asking the same questions it raised in Mexico City. How much should one player be forgiven if he also delivers one of the greatest goals ever scored? How much does officiating matter when the result becomes part of national memory? In 1986, Maradona gave football both a scandal and a masterpiece in the space of four minutes, and the sport has been living with that contradiction ever since.