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Maradona later provided conflicting accounts of what had happened. At first he said he never touched the ball with his fist; then he said he did it accidentally; then he attributed the goal to divine intervention, to the “hand of God”.
This infuriated the British.
“Cheeky and shameless, Maradona was all fake innocence, talking about the ‘hand of God’,” wrote Brian Glanville in his book “The History of the World Cup”. “For England, rather, it was the hand of the devil.”
Four minutes later, Maradona scored again, eventually giving Argentina a 2-1 victory. His second goal came after a 70-yard dribble through five English players and a final feint over Shilton to feed the ball into an empty net. Skillfully, he changed direction like a slalom skier jumping from gate to gate.
In his book “The Simplest Game”, Paul Gardner described running as “10 seconds of pure, unimaginable football skill to score one of the greatest goals in World Cup history”.
In the 1986 final, Maradona’s pass to the center of West Germany’s defense established the winning goal in a 3-2 win for Argentina. “No player in World Cup history had ever dominated in the way that Maradona ruled Mexico-86,” Gardner wrote.
Maradona threatened to make his way through the 1990 World Cup, picking up a stray ball, feinting around a defender and going through a thick leg to witness the only goal in the quarter-final win against Brazil. In the semifinals, against Italy, the host team, Maradona scored the penalty that brought Argentina forward by winning the penalties.
This was Maradona in his glory. The match was played in the noisy port city of Naples, where Maradona had played professionally and brought Napoli to two titles in the Italian league. Boldly, he had asked fans there to cheer for Argentina over Italy.
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