June 22, 1986.

The Estadio Azteca in Mexico City bore witness to the most notorious incident the FIFA World Cup has ever seen…

Well, that or the Zidane headbutt.

In the 50th minute of the Quarter Final between Argentina and England, with some 114,580 people in attendance and millions more watching on, English midfielder Steve Hodge attempted to end an Argentine attack with a high back pass to goalkeeper Peter Shilton, which put the offside Neapolitan god Diego Maradona (Who had started the attack by beating off Glenn Hoddle) onside to attempt to out-jump Shilton with a header, a seemingly futile task as Maradona was some 20 centimetres shorter than Shilton…

Shilton went to punch it away with his right fist.

Maradona jumped with his left arm outstretched.

Maradona’s hand struck the ball first, which the Tunisian referee Ali Bin Nasser thought had been some kind of miraculous header by Maradona with his height disadvantage, the linesman didn’t see the hand either, and to the disbelief of the English players, the goal stood and Maradona, who had been expecting the referee to notice the handball, started celebrating despite having committed one of the most famous acts of cheating on a sporting field.

The incident would be given its immortal name by Maradona himself after the match:

“Un poco con la cabeza de Maradona y otro poco con la mano de Dios.”

A little with the head of Maradona, and a little with the HAND OF GOD.

And from that point on, any incident involving the use of hand would refer back to the Hand of God.

Of course, Maradona also said it was a legitimate goal and he didn’t want to argue with the referee’s decision, but in 2005 he finally admitted he did use his hand and apologised, an apology that was rejected by Shilton.

Then after that symbolic piece of revenge against the English for the Falklands War 4 years earlier, for the injustice of the 1966 World Cup Quarter Final (In which Sir Alf Ramsey called the Argentinians “Animals”), and for a host of other injustices committed by the British, and a mere 4 minutes after the Hand of God, Maradona produced his magnum opus as a player.

In the space of 15 seconds, Maradona sprinted 60 metres, dribbled past 4 English players (Peter Beardsley, Terry Fenwick, Peter Reid and poor old Terry Butcher was beaten twice), pulling a feint that left Shilton on the ground, and slotting the ball into an empty net – In 2002, it was voted as the Goal of the Century on FIFA.com, and it just isn’t worth watching without Byron Butler’s commentary:

“Maradona turns, like a little eel, and comes away from trouble; a little squat man. Comes inside Butcher, leaves him for dead, outside Fenwick leaves him for dead, and puts the ball away, and that is why Maradona is the greatest player in the world! He buried the English defence, he picked up that ball 40 yards out, first he left one man for dead, first he went past Sansom. It’s a goal of great quality by a player of the greatest quality, it’s England nil Argentina two, the first goal should never have allowed, but Maradona has put the seal on his greatness. He’s left his thumbprint on this World Cup. He’s scored a goal that England just couldn’t cope with, they couldn’t face up to. It was beyond their ability. It’s England nil, Diego Maradona two!”

You do notice in there that Butler got the distance wrong – It was 66 yards, not 40.

Chasing the game at 0-2 down, Bobby Robson brought on Chris Waddle and John Barnes, and it almost paid off as Gary Lineker scored his 6th goal of the tournament in the 81st minute (Which would win him the Golden Boot), and Lineker very nearly scored the equaliser in the 88th minute from a Barnes cross, only for Julio Olarticoechea to somehow intercept the ball and clear it off the line.

Argentina played out the final minutes and won the match 2-1, and won their second World Cup 2-1 against West Germany at the Azteca a week later as Maradona received the Golden Ball as Player of the Tournament – In the Semi Final against Belgium, Maradona scored another brace, with his second goal, in which he ran through 4 defenders and shot the ball at full power while being off-balance, being considered by some scribes as being as good as the second goal against England, a comparison that Maradona himself disliked, and wrote as such in his 2016 autobiography Touched by God:

Other stories:

Maradona finished as the most fouled player in the 1982, 1986 and 1990 World Cups – He was fouled a record total of 53 times in the 1986 World Cup, and a record total of 152 times in 4 World Cups – By comparison, Lionel Messi had only been fouled 75 times in 5 World Cups prior to 2026.

In a 2002 poll for Channel 4’s 100 Greatest Sporting Moments, Maradona’s performance was voted at No.6 – It was the highest ranked non-British sporting moment, with the Top 5 being Ian Botham’s Headingley heroics in 1981 (No.5), Manchester United’s comeback in the 1999 Champions League Final (No.4), England winning the 1966 World Cup (No.3), England defeating Germany 5-1 in Munich in a 2002 World Cup Qualifier (No.2) and Sir Steve Redgrave’s 5th Gold Medal at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

Another famous tale was that 3 days prior to the game, the Argentine manager Carlos Bilardo asked for a lighter kit to be worn in the Mexico City heat, as his players had worn royal blue cotton shirts in the Round of 16 match against Uruguay, so a member of the Argentine coaching staff (Ruben Moschella) scoured shops across Mexico City looking for a light blue polyester shirt produced by Argentina’s kit manufacturer Le Coq Sportif…

Moschella found two which were roughly the same colour, but Maradona entered the room, looked at one of them and said “That’s nice, we’ll beat England in that.” – A designer helped fashion on an older version of the Argentina Football Association logo (Which is very noticeable in photos when compared to the regular Argentinian shirt), plus some silver American football numbers on the back – England also wore a variant of their own kit, with the white home shirt and pale blue shorts and socks from their third kit… they wouldn’t wear white shirts without white socks again until Euro 2016.

Steve Hodge swapped shirts with Maradona, which was verified by Maradona in his autobiography that he swapped shirts with Hodge in the tunnel after the match, despite claims by Maradona’s daughter and ex-wife to the contrary – After turning down requests for decades, including after Maradona’s death in November 2020, Hodge eventually put the shirt up for auction via Sotheby’s in May 2022, selling for £7,142,500, an all-time record for a match-worn sports shirt.

Gary Lineker, who later had a long career with the BBC’s Match of the Day, met with Maradona at his home in Buenos Aries in 2006, in which they discussed the events of 1986:

England and Argentina played a friendly at Wembley in 1991, then didn’t play each other again until the 1998 World Cup, a Round of 16 match in Saint Etienne that proved to be as wild as the 1986 encounter, as Argentina deliberately wore their change kits in a nod to 1986, 18-year-old Michael Owen scored a solo goal that evoked memories of Maradona’s Goal of the Century, David Beckham was sent off for flicking Diego Simeone with his boot, Argentina eventually won the match in a penalty shootout, and Beckham was scapegoated by English fans.

After the 1986 Quarter Final, England didn’t play a FIFA World Cup match in the venue hosting the World Cup Final until the 2018 World Cup Semi Final against Croatia at the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow – Their match against Panama on June 27 will be held in the Metlife Stadium aka the New York/New Jersey Stadium, which is hosting the 2026 Final.

England and Argentina have not played each other since a November 2005 friendly in Switzerland – Lionel Messi, despite never playing against the English, has scored for Argentina at West Ham’s former home ground Upton Park (against Croatia in 2014) and played in the 2022 Finalissima against Italy at Wembley.

In that time, England have played against South American nations Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay.