On 22 June 1986, in a World Cup quarter-final at the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City, Diego Maradona scored twice against England in four minutes. The first goal, after 51 minutes, went in off his left hand. The second, after 55, came at the end of a run from inside his own half that a FIFA online poll later voted the Goal of the Century. Argentina won 2-1, and Diego Maradona’s Hand of God goal became one of the most argued-about goals in football.
Most retellings squeeze the whole afternoon into a sentence. This one goes through it slowly: the build-up, what the referee and his linesman said afterwards, what Maradona said about it over the next thirty years, and one thing the goal did not do, which is give football VAR. The facts come from FIFA’s match centre, RSSSF’s match records and Wikipedia. Where they disagree, we say so at the bottom of the page.
| The match | Argentina v England |
|---|---|
| Date | 22 June 1986 |
| Stage | Quarter-final, 1986 World Cup |
| Venue | Estadio Azteca, Mexico City |
| Result | Argentina 2-1 England (0-0 at half-time) |
| Goals | Maradona 51′, Maradona 55′; Lineker 81′ |
| Referee | Ali Bin Nasser (Tunisia) |
| Linesmen | Bogdan Dochev (Bulgaria), Berny Ulloa (Costa Rica) |
| Captains | Diego Maradona; Peter Shilton |
| Coaches | Carlos Bilardo; Bobby Robson |
| Booked | Terry Fenwick, Sergio Batista (RSSSF also lists Terry Butcher) |
Before kick-off: 1966, the Falklands and a shirt from a Mexico City shop
The two teams had history before Maradona touched the ball. Their quarter-final at Wembley in 1966, which England won 1-0, ended with Argentina’s captain Antonio Rattín sent off and with England’s manager Alf Ramsey calling the Argentina players “animals”. Then, in 1982, came the Falklands War, fought over islands that Britain administers and Argentina claims. Four years later nobody on either side treated this as just another quarter-final. Fans fought in the streets before the match and inside the stadium.
Argentina’s shirts were a last-minute buy. Carlos Bilardo thought the heavy blue cotton change shirts they had worn against Uruguay in the round of 16 would be too hot in the Mexico City sun, and there was no time to get lighter ones from the kit supplier, Le Coq Sportif. Three days before the match a member of his staff, Rubén Moschella, went round the city’s shops and came back with two blue shirts. Maradona picked one and said they would beat England in it. Moschella went back and bought 38. The badges were improvised and the silver numbers were ironed on.
The Hand of God goal, 51st minute
The first half finished 0-0. Argentina had more of the ball and Shilton made several saves; England’s best chance fell to Peter Beardsley after 13 minutes, when Nery Pumpido slipped in the Argentina goal.
Six minutes into the second half, Maradona cut in from the left and played a low pass towards Jorge Valdano on the edge of the area, then kept running for the return. The pass was slightly behind Valdano and reached Steve Hodge, England’s left midfielder, who had dropped back to defend. Hodge tried to hook it clear and sliced it. The ball looped up into the penalty area, towards Maradona, and towards Peter Shilton, who came off his line to punch it away.
Shilton was 6 ft 1 in. Maradona was about eight inches shorter. He got there first, with the outside of his left hand, and the ball dropped into the net. The Tunisian referee, Ali Bin Nasser, gave the goal. Maradona said later that his team-mates were slow to come and celebrate, and that he called them over so the referee would not change his mind.
Why the referee allowed it
Bin Nasser’s account is that he did not see the handball and thought Maradona had headed the ball. He says he looked to his Bulgarian linesman, Bogdan Dochev, for a signal, got none, and awarded the goal; television pictures show him looking towards Dochev after the ball went in. Dochev tells it the other way round. Under FIFA’s instructions at the time, he said, linesmen were not allowed to discuss decisions with the referee, whose word was final, and he put the mistake down to Bin Nasser’s lack of experience at that level.
Both versions can be true at once, and I think that is why the argument never really ended: the rules of the day left one man alone with a decision he had not seen. Glenn Hoddle, who was on the pitch, said Maradona had disguised the handball by flicking his head at the same moment. In August 2015 Maradona visited Bin Nasser at his home in Tunisia, gave him a signed Argentina shirt and called him his “eternal friend”.
The Goal of the Century, 55th minute
Four minutes later Maradona picked the ball up inside his own half and ran at England. On the way he went past four outfield players, Peter Beardsley, Peter Reid, Terry Fenwick and Terry Butcher, Butcher twice, then sent Shilton to the ground with a feint and rolled the ball into the empty net. Wikipedia’s article on the match puts the run at 60 yards and about 10 seconds; its article on Maradona says 60 metres and 11 touches. Either way it was more than half the pitch.
He said afterwards that he had been looking to pass to Valdano, but found himself surrounded in the area with no space and had to finish it himself. He also said he did not think he could have done it against any other team, because the others would have knocked him down.
In 2002, in the build-up to the World Cup in South Korea and Japan, a poll on FIFA’s website voted it the Goal of the Century. Michael Owen’s goal against Argentina in 1998 came second, and another Maradona goal from 1986, in the semi-final against Belgium, came fourth. In Spanish-speaking countries the goal is tied to the radio commentary of the Uruguayan journalist Víctor Hugo Morales. Even Gary Lineker, who played in the match, said later that he felt like applauding it.
Two goals four minutes apart, by the same player, against the same goalkeeper. One broke the Laws of the Game. The other is the goal most people would keep if they could keep only one. That pairing is the reason the match is still told in full rather than as a scoreline.
How England got back to 2-1
Two goals down, Bobby Robson sent on two wingers, Chris Waddle for Reid and John Barnes for Trevor Steven. It nearly worked. Argentina were tiring, and England, pushed on by Glenn Hoddle and Barnes, started to make chances. After 81 minutes Barnes crossed and Gary Lineker headed in. Straight afterwards Carlos Tapia hit the inside of the post for Argentina, and England never found the equaliser.
It was Lineker’s sixth goal of the tournament, and he finished as its top scorer. Argentina beat Belgium 2-0 in the semi-final, with two more goals from Maradona, and West Germany 3-2 in the final, and Maradona won the Golden Ball. The rest of his four tournaments, match by match, is on our Diego Maradona World Cup record page.
What Diego Maradona said about the Hand of God
At the press conference after the match, Maradona said the goal had been scored “a little with the head of Maradona and a little with the hand of God”. The goal has had that name ever since. It was a joke, and it admitted nothing.
He was less careful later. In his autobiography, Yo Soy El Diego, published in 2000, he tied the match to the Falklands and called the win revenge. In 2005 he admitted that he had hit the ball with his hand on purpose, that his head had not touched it, and that he knew straight away the goal was illegal. In Asif Kapadia’s 2019 documentary, Diego Maradona, he said it had not been planned, it all happened too fast for the linesman, and it felt like a kind of symbolic revenge against the English.
Plenty of people in Argentina saw it the same way. Roberto Perfumo, a former Argentina defender, said that beating England was enough that year and winning the World Cup came second. The former Argentina coach César Luis Menotti remembered people saying it was better that the goal was unjust, because it hurt the English more. The French sports paper L’Équipe settled on “half-angel, half-devil”.
Did the Hand of God lead to VAR?
You will often read that it did. The documented history says otherwise. VAR came out of a project called Refereeing 2.0, run by the Royal Netherlands Football Association (KNVB) in the early 2010s. It was tested in mock trials in the Eredivisie in the 2012-13 season, and in 2014 the KNVB asked the International Football Association Board (IFAB), which writes the Laws of the Game, to allow wider trials. IFAB approved them at its 2016 general meeting. The first competitive match to use VAR was a Dutch cup tie between Ajax and Willem II on 21 September 2016, and it was written into the Laws on 3 March 2018. Its first World Cup was Russia 2018.
When IFAB’s secretary, Lukas Brud, explained why referees needed protecting from mistakes that everyone could see on television, the example he gave was Thierry Henry’s handball in the match that knocked Ireland out of qualifying for the 2010 World Cup. He did not point to Mexico City. The fair way to put it is that the Hand of God is the most famous example of what VAR is designed to catch, a “clear and obvious error” that decided a match. There is no record of it being one of the reasons VAR exists.
The shirt, the ball and the statue
Steve Hodge, whose sliced clearance set up the first goal, swapped shirts with Maradona in the tunnel after the match. He kept it for years, then lent it to the National Football Museum in Manchester. In May 2022 it was sold at Sotheby’s, at a record price for a piece of sports memorabilia.
The match ball stayed with Bin Nasser for 36 years. It was first sold at auction in London in 2022, put up again a year later without reaching its reserve, and sold again in 2026 by Heritage Auctions in Dallas. Outside the Azteca there is a statue of Maradona scoring the second goal, which tells you which of the two the place chose to remember. In Britain, a Channel 4 poll in 2002 placed his performance sixth in a list of the 100 greatest sporting moments.
Argentina and England at the World Cup since 1986
| Year | Stage | Result | What people remember |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1998 | Round of 16 | Argentina 2-2 England (Argentina won 4-3 on penalties) | David Beckham sent off; Michael Owen’s solo goal |
| 2002 | Group stage | Argentina 0-1 England | David Beckham’s penalty |
| 2026 | Semi-final | England 1-2 Argentina | Two late Argentina goals in Atlanta |
The 2026 meeting came forty years after Mexico City. Anthony Gordon put England ahead after 55 minutes in Atlanta; Enzo Fernández equalised after 85 and Lautaro Martínez won it for Argentina in stoppage time.
So what actually happened with Diego Maradona’s Hand of God? A sliced clearance, a goalkeeper eight inches taller, a left hand, and a referee and a linesman who each expected the other to stop it. Four minutes later the same player scored the goal that made the first one impossible to forget, or to forgive, depending on where you watched it. More of the tournament’s landmarks are on our World Cup records page.
Sources and method
RSSSF’s match records for 1986, 1998 and 2002; FIFA’s match centre for the 1986 quarter-final and the 2026 semi-final; Wikipedia’s pages on Argentina v England (1986 FIFA World Cup), Diego Maradona, Ali Bin Nasser, Bogdan Dochev and Video assistant referee, all read on 26 September 2026.
The result, scorers, line-ups, officials and bookings come from FIFA and RSSSF. The account of the goals, the referee’s and linesman’s versions, the quotes and the later history of the shirt and the ball come from Wikipedia, which cites the original interviews. Maradona’s words are paraphrased except for the “hand of God” line. The VAR timeline is Wikipedia’s, based on IFAB and the KNVB. The rules are in How we verify.
Where the sources disagree
The three sources agree on the result, both Maradona goals, Lineker’s goal and the officials. They differ on the points below. The widest gaps are the substitution minutes, which is why none are given above, and Wikipedia’s description of England’s goal in the 2026 semi-final as an “early lead”, when FIFA’s match centre has it after 55 minutes.
| Point | FIFA | Wikipedia | RSSSF | Used |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Second Maradona goal | 55′ | 55′ | 56′ | 55′ |
| Bookings | Fenwick 9′, Batista 60′ | Not given in the text | Batista, Fenwick, Butcher | Fenwick, Batista; Butcher noted |
| Substitutions (Reid, Steven, Burruchaga) | 69′, 74′, 75′ | Not given in the text | 66′, 76′, 76′ | No minutes given |
| Referee’s name | Ali Bennaceur | Ali Bin Nasser, Ali Ben Nasser | Ben Naceur | Ali Bin Nasser |
| Length of the second-goal run | Not given | 60 yards, about 10 seconds (match article); 60 metres, 11 touches (Maradona article) | Not given | Both given |
| Gordon’s goal, 2026 semi-final | 55′ | “An early lead” | Not covered | 55′ |