Maradona '86 - Hand of God Goal

With the next World Cup a few months away, I stumbled upon this post by Brian Phillips (who has also created a podcast called 22 Goals). The topic of the first one in the series is, unsurprising:

“Diego Maradona scored two of the most famous, two of the most iconic goals in the history of the World Cup, back to back, in three minutes and 49 seconds of real time.”

 

Phillips defines clearly what the theme of his podcasts and posts will be:

“This is not a soccer essay; this is a euphoria machine.”

Euphoria machine? What’s that? Read on. You’ll get what he means as he describes the first of those iconic goals – the Hand of God goal.

 

But first, history matters. Take Maradona’s start as a child prodigy:

“He has passion. More than that he has vision. He has timing. He sees where things are going five seconds before they get there. Adults take notice. They alert other adults. Some of these adults are coaches on high-level youth teams. Does money change hands? Yeah. Does the money go to his family? Not most of it!”

And so this is how his life as a football player starts off:

“Do his youth coaches lie about his age so he can help them win games against older kids? They sure do. Does anyone make sure he keeps going to school after that point? Nope!”

 

Then there’s the England-Argentina history. In 1982, it was the Falkland War:

“Around 300 miles off the coast of Argentina, near the northern tip of Antarctica, is an archipelago called the Falkland Islands… The islands are British territory. Footnote one, see colonialism. Argentina maintains—and still does, to this day—that the islands belong to it.”

A war that deepens pre-existing animosities:

“Within Argentina, the Falklands War intensified a long-standing feeling that the country has been treated as a whipping boy, as a second-class world citizen, by Britain and America and their allies.”

And this animosity is much older than Falklands:

“The England soccer manager Alf Ramsey had infamously called the Argentine players “animals” after a bad-tempered match at the 1966 World Cup.”

No wonder then:

“So yes. When Argentina draws England in the ’86 World Cup quarterfinals, it makes for a, let’s say, charged atmosphere.”

 

Here’s Phillips description of the Hand of God goal. Maradona passes the ball to Valdano, who loses it, and Steve Hodge clears it back towards the goalkeeper, Peter Shilton:

“Peter Shilton, Maradona, and the ball are now rapidly converging directly in front of the goalmouth… They both go up for the ball. The referee is about 10 yards behind them. Shilton looms over Maradona and is also allowed to use his hands. This should be an easy get. Yet somehow Maradona makes this odd sort of twisting leap, and before you see what happened the ball has gone past Shilton and bounced into the net.”

 

Or just watch the goal here:

 

Phillips continues:

“You’ve got Maradona, like, half-celebrating with all these little furtive glances back at the ref to see if he’s been caught, like a kid sneaking out of the room with a cookie. You’ve got the referee practically feeling in his pocket for his glasses.”

Post-match, here’s how Maradona described the goal:

“A little with the head of Maradona, and a little with the hand of God.”

 

Why does this goal rile people so much? It’s just a game, after all…

“Without the rules, we can’t have sports; we can’t trust sports. Who do you trust? The Hand of God is an iconic goal that cuts directly against the continued viability of the sport it’s an icon in.”

On the other hand, there’s Maradona’s history:

“But what if you look at it this way? What if the system has been rigged against you, what if the rules have been rigged against you, your whole life? What if the rules, as you see them, exist to be invoked against you, to keep you down… from the time you were born?”

And so Phillips writes:

“I’m not saying this outlook is correct. I’m saying this is about a feeling, and right now it’s about the feeling that the system was not made for you. It was made for someone else, to be deployed against you. And to survive, you have to outwit it.”

 

As if this wasn’t enough drama, Maradona then goes on to score the goal of the century just:

“Three and a half minutes later…”

More on that in the next blog.