The shirt that Maradona wore against England in the 1986 World Cup in Mexico will be auctioned

A game that was framed in the history of world football. The shirt worn by Diego Armando Maradona in the Argentina vs. England for the quarterfinals of the World Cup in Mexico 1986 is up for auction by the bidding house Sotheby’s, and it is estimated that it can reach a value close to 6 million pounds (about 7.2 million euros) .

That day, at the Azteca stadium in Mexico City, still with the vivid memory of the Malvinas War that confronted the United Kingdom and Argentina in 1982, Maradona starred in two of the most historic and remembered goals in world football: the first , called ‘the Hand of God’; the second, ‘the Goal of the Century’.

It was the 51st minute, when Maradona, offside, took advantage of a bad high clearance by Steve Hodge inside the area, which made the ‘Fluff’ position legal, to anticipate Peter Shilton’s jump to the goal and score theoretically with a header the 1-0. In reality, his shot was with his left fist, but this was not noticed by the main referee or by his assistants. He was subsequently referred to as ‘the Hand of God’.

The 2-0, in the 55th minute, was a work of art. Maradona grabbed the ball in midfield and went at speed towards the English area, getting rid of as many rivals as he could, even dribbling past Shliton himself. It was years later, in a popular vote by FIFA, chosen as the best goal in the history of the World Cups.

Without a doubt, Maradona’s shirt was a precious objective. And it was achieved, curiously, by the person who gave him the ‘undesired’ assistance of 1-0: Steve Hodge, a midfielder in that game and who exchanged it at the end of it.

“After an interview, I went down, behind the goal, to the locker room… While I was going down, Maradona was walking with two of his teammates. I looked him in the eye, tugged at my shirt as if to say ‘is there any chance of a trade?’, and he came over, made a prayer gesture, and we traded shirts. And that was it. It was as simple as that”, Hodge told years ago in a television interview how he got the coveted shirt with the ’10’.

Even Maradona himself in a passage from the book ‘Touched by God’, which includes the most brilliant moments of his career as a footballer, recounts this exchange. “On the way to the locker room, one of the English guys (it turned out to be Hodge, but I wasn’t sure at the time) asked me to do it. Swap t-shirts with him. I said yes and we did”, he points out.