Mexico 1986: Maradona's four minutes, the Hand of God and the Goal of the Century
- Maradona scored two goals in four minutes against England in the quarter-finals of the 1986 Mexico World Cup
- The first goal was the 'Hand of God', where Maradona used his hand to deceive the referee and score
- The second goal was considered the 'Goal of the Century' for its brilliance and skill in dribbling past several English players
Some World Cups are remembered for a team and some are remembered for a match. This one is remembered for four minutes of a quarter-final, and by a player who in that time showed football's two faces one right after the other.
🇲🇽 The 1986 World Cup in numbers
- Host
- Mexico
- Teams
- 24
- Champions
- 🏆 Argentina
- Runners-up
- West Germany
- Final
- Argentina 3-2 West Germany
- Stadium
- Azteca · Mexico City
- Attendance
- 114,600
- Top scorer
- Gary Lineker (England), 6 goals
The World Cup Mexico wasn't supposed to host
The host nation was supposed to be Colombia. FIFA had given it to them in 1974, but in 1982 they pulled out: they couldn't afford the costs or the infrastructure demands. Mexico, which had already hosted it in 1970, stepped in and took over.
And then, on 19 September 1985, a devastating earthquake struck Mexico City and killed thousands of people. Eight months before the World Cup. There was debate about whether it could go ahead; it did.
Mexico became the first country to host two World Cups. Today it's had three, because it hosted again in 2026.
The four minutes
22 June, Azteca Stadium, quarter-finals. Argentina versus England, four years after the Falklands War. The atmosphere didn't need any explanation.
51st minute. A ball is floated into the box, Maradona jumps against goalkeeper Peter Shilton, who has him by twenty centimetres, and he gets it in. With his left hand. The Tunisian referee doesn't see it and awards the goal. In the press conference, Maradona said it was «a little bit with the head of Maradona and a little bit with the hand of God». It took him nineteen years to fully admit it had been his hand.
55th minute. He collects the ball in his own half, spins between two opponents and takes off. Sixty metres, eleven seconds, five English defenders beaten and Shilton again. Eyewitnesses say that the stadium, with 114,000 people, took a couple of seconds to react because nobody could believe what they'd just seen.
The two goals, the dirtiest and the cleanest, in the same match and four minutes apart. There's nothing else like it in the history of sport.
Spain: five goals from Butragueño and a shootout lost
Spain arrived in Mexico with the Vulture's generation and drew Denmark in the round of 16, who had dominated their group and were the tournament's sensation.
They won 5-1. And Emilio Butragueño scored four. It remains one of the best afternoons in the history of the Spanish national team and the only time a Spaniard has scored four goals in a World Cup match.
In the quarter-finals, against Belgium, a 1-1 draw and elimination on penalties. Again. But that team left the feeling, for the first time in a long while, that Spain could compete with anyone.
The final
June 29th, Azteca, 114,600 people — the largest attendance at a final since the Maracaná in 1950. Argentina went 2-0 up with goals from Brown and Valdano, Germany levelled at 2 in ten minutes through Rummenigge and Völler, and in the 84th minute Maradona threaded a through ball for Jorge Burruchaga, who made it 3-2.
Maradona finished with five goals, five assists and the Golden Ball. Germany lost their second consecutive final.
That Argentina was a mediocre team that Maradona carried on his shoulders all the way to the title.
That he was decisive like few players have ever been — five goals and five assists in seven matches, with direct involvement in ten of the team's fourteen goals — but he wasn't alone. The goal that won the final was scored by Burruchaga, in the final Brown and Valdano also scored, and Carlos Bilardo's system, with three centre-backs, was designed precisely to free him up. Being far and away the best player doesn't make the rest bit-part actors: it makes it a team that knew exactly what it had him for.
That Maradona scored with his hand as revenge for the 1982 war, and that he said so himself.
That the political context was obvious and that years later, in his autobiography, he himself wrote that it felt like picking an Englishman's pocket. But in 1986 he explicitly denied that the match was payback for the war, and both he and his teammates insisted at the time that they didn't want to mix it up. Both versions are his, said at different points in his life. Telling it only with the epic version that came later is only telling half the story.
That FIFA officially declared the second goal against England as the greatest in history.
That it was a popular internet vote organised by FIFA in 2002, not a verdict from an expert panel. That doesn't take away from it — it won with more than 18% of the votes and ahead of Michael Owen's goal against Argentina — but it's worth knowing what that title actually is. What is objective: eleven seconds, sixty metres and five defenders beaten in the knockout stages of a World Cup.
What it left behind
It left behind the idea, which has never gone away, that a single footballer can win a World Cup. It left behind the Mexican wave, which went global in these stands. And it left Maradona turned into something more than a player: in Mexico 86 begins the myth that followed him, for better and for worse, for the rest of his life.
Four years later he'd be back in another final. But that was another story entirely, and a lot sadder.
- Maradona's statements about the Hand of God changed throughout his life: here we include both the 1986 version and his later ones, without choosing just one.
- The photos are in the public domain via Wikimedia Commons; each carries its author and licence at the bottom.
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