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Maradona then gave conflicting accounts of what had happened. At first he said that he had never touched the ball with his fist; then he said he had done it accidentally; then he attributed the objective to divine intervention, to “the hand of God.”
This infuriated the English.
“Shameless and shameless, Maradona was all feigned innocence, speaking of 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 and finally gave Argentina the 2-1 victory. His second goal came after a 70-yard dribble through five English players and a final feint past Shilton to propel the ball into an empty net. Deftly, he changed direction like a slalom skier cutting from door to door.
In his book “The Simplest Game”, Paul Gardner described the race as “10 seconds of pure and unimaginable football prowess to score one of the greatest goals in World Cup history.”
In the 1986 final, Maradona’s pass through the center of the West German defense scored the winning goal in a 3-2 victory for Argentina. “No player in the history of the World Cup has ever mastered the way Maradona governed Mexico-86,” Gardner wrote.
Maradona threatened to break through at the 1990 World Cup, picking up a fumble, feinting around a defender and going through a tangle of legs to aid in the only goal in the quarter-final victory against Brazil. In the semifinals, against Italy, the host team, Maradona scored the penalty that put Argentina ahead in the penalty shoot-out.
This was Maradona in his glory. The match was played in the noisy port city of Naples, where Maradona had played professionally and led Naples to two Italian League titles. He had boldly asked fans to cheer on Argentina over Italy.
