For all its importance to football, the ball is almost a detail in one of the most iconic photographs of the 20th century. In the famous image of the “Hand of God”, the audacious handball with which Maradona eliminated England in the quarter-finals of the 1986 World Cup in Mexico, it is barely visible among the expressions of the Argentine, goalkeeper Shilton and, above all, the position of the hand. And yet that ball is more than a piece of football history. It has become part of the wider history of the 20th century. Maradona made an entire mythology out of that moment, and out of the figure of the man who defeats the “English colonialists”, even when the means are not entirely clean. The ball carries some of that mythology with it. According to El Mundo, it will now go under the hammer at Heritage Auctions, the Texas-based auction house, and could fetch more than $10 million. The auction runs from August 21 to 23, with bidding starting at $2.5 million. Heritage Auctions expects the final price to reach eight figures.
Maradona already holds the most relevant record in football memorabilia. The shirt he wore against England is the most expensive football shirt ever sold at auction, having fetched $9.3 million. That match remains one of the defining days of his career. Alongside the “Hand of God”, Maradona scored the “Goal of the Century”, widely regarded as the finest goal in World Cup history. He received the ball just beyond halfway, drove forward and went past five opponents, riding out their increasingly desperate attempts to stop him. Then came Shilton, beaten by another touch, before Maradona rolled the ball into the net. One of the great individual runs in the history of the game.
The rivalry between Argentina and England, sharpened by the political tensions surrounding the dispute over sovereignty of the Falkland Islands, resurfaced decades later at this summer’s World Cup, when the two sides met in the semi-finals. Argentina won 2-1 before losing the final to Spain. Now, forty years after that afternoon in Mexico, the ball is being sold. Not on a football pitch, but at auction. The ball from the “Hand of God” could become one of the most valuable sporting objects ever sold.