It took four minutes.
Four minutes for Diego Maradona to commit football’s most famous crime and produce its most famous masterpiece. Same match. Same opponent. Same sweltering afternoon at the Estadio Azteca.
The 1986 quarter-final between Argentina and England was never going to be just a football match. Four years after the Falklands conflict, the political weight pressed on every blade of grass. Maradona later admitted the Argentine players felt it. The English insisted they did not. Nobody believed them.
The Hand of God
Six minutes into the second half, Maradona played a one-two that broke down. The ball looped towards Peter Shilton. The goalkeeper had six inches and an arm’s length on the Argentine. It did not matter.
Maradona rose and punched the ball into the net with his left fist. The referee, unsighted, gave the goal. England’s players chased him across the pitch in fury. The scoreboard read 1–0.
“A little with the head of Maradona, and a little with the hand of God,” he said afterwards. The phrase outlived the controversy.
The Goal of the Century
What happened next is why football forgave him.
Maradona collected the ball inside his own half, spun away from two challenges in one movement, and ran. Past Reid. Past Butcher. Past Fenwick. Sixty metres at full speed, the ball obedient at his feet, before he rounded Shilton and rolled it home.
Ten touches. Eleven seconds. In 2002, FIFA’s official poll named it the Goal of the Century. Few argued.
The aftermath
Gary Lineker pulled one back in the 81st minute. It was his sixth of the tournament, enough for the Golden Boot. It was not enough for England. Argentina won 2–1, then beat Belgium and West Germany to lift the trophy.
Maradona finished the tournament with five goals and five assists. No player has dominated a single World Cup so completely since. Whether anyone ever will is the debate that never ends.
So here is the question for the comments: do the four minutes at the Azteca make Maradona’s 1986 the greatest individual tournament ever — or does the first goal stain the second?