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....