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The Hand of God goal refers to an incident in the 1986 FIFA World Cup quarter-final match between England and Argentina in the Estadio Azteca of Mexico City.
Tensions between the two countries were running high, in part due to the recent Falklands War.
Six minutes into the second half there were still no goals. Diego Maradona took the ball down the pitch and crossed it to his team-mate Jorge Valdano, whose shot was blocked by defender Steve Hodge. The English goalkeeper, Peter Shilton, came out of his goalmouth to catch or punch the ball, but Maradona reached it first — with his hand. The ball landed in the back of the net and, to the amazement of the English players, neither the linesman nor the referee (Tunisian Ali Bin Nasser) had seen Maradona's foul play, so the goal was allowed.
The Argentines celebrated while the Englishmen protested, but to no avail. At the press conference after the game, Maradona further infuriated the English by claiming the goal was scored "a little bit by the Hand of God, another bit by the head of Maradona". Decades later Maradona did admit that the ball came off his hand; however, he maintained that it was an accident, in spite of the widely-shown video and photographic evidence that clearly demonstrated that he touched the ball with his forearm, until the publication of his autobiography in 2004, in which he wrote:
- Now I feel I am able to say what I couldn't then. At the time I called it "the hand of God". Bollocks was it the hand of God, it was the hand of Diego! And it felt a little bit like pickpocketing the English.
Later in the same match, Maradona scored another goal, considered by many as one of the best goals in World Cup history, in which he eluded five English outfield players and Shilton. In 2002, this goal was voted as the Goal of the Century. England scored once, but the disputed goal proved decisive, meaning England were knocked out of the competition.
Argentina went on to win the World Cup that year.
For the next few days the English press referred to the incident as "The Hand of the Devil". Argus Software released a football simulation game for home computers entitled Peter Shilton's Handball Maradona. The moment remained in the English collective consciousness so much that, when England beat Argentina 1-0 in the 2002 World Cup, T-shirts displaying the result were also emblazoned with the phrase "Look no hands".
Maradona remained unpopular with the English press for many years and when he was later banned from football for drug use, the tabloid newspaper The Sun stated in a headline "Dirty Diego Gone For Good!"
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