Against England in 1986, Diego Maradona scored one goal that should never have counted and another that seemed impossible. Together they created football’s most uncomfortable portrait of genius.

Peter Shilton raised one arm. Diego Maradona raised the other.

The England goalkeeper was taller, could use his hands and appeared certain to reach the dropping ball first. Maradona was running towards him from the edge of the penalty area. There was no conventional way for the smaller man to win the contest.

So he did something unconventional.

Maradona jumped and punched the ball with his left fist. It travelled beyond Shilton and into the net. The England players appealed immediately. Referee Ali Bin Nasser looked towards his assistant, received no signal and awarded the goal.

Four minutes later, Maradona collected the ball inside his own half and produced a goal that required no deception. He accelerated away from England’s midfield, carried the ball through a succession of challenges, rounded Shilton and scored.

The first goal survived because the officials did not see what happened. The second survived because nobody could stop what they could see.

Argentina beat England 2–1 in the 1986 World Cup quarter-final on 22 June. Maradona scored in the 51st and 55th minutes. Those goals became known as the Hand of God and the Goal of the Century. They arrived close enough to feel like one extended revelation: the same player could violate the contest and elevate it before England had recovered from the first shock.

That contradiction is why the match remains larger than its result.

A quarter-final carrying more than football

Argentina and England met at the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City, four years after the Falklands War. The political history gave the match a meaning that neither team could fully control. For many supporters, it was impossible to treat the quarter-final as an ordinary sporting encounter.

But the game should not be rewritten as a direct continuation of the conflict. The players were footballers, not soldiers, and the match had its own competitive history. Argentina and England had already developed a difficult World Cup rivalry. Their 1966 quarter-final ended with Argentina captain Antonio Rattín sent off and years of argument about refereeing, discipline and sporting culture.

By 1986, Maradona carried Argentina’s ambition. He was captain, playmaker and the player through whom the team’s attacking possibilities flowed. Carlos Bilardo’s side had drawn criticism before the tournament, but Maradona’s performances in Mexico altered the scale of what seemed possible.

England entered the quarter-final after recovering from a poor start. They had failed to score in their opening two matches before Gary Lineker’s hat-trick against Poland transformed their campaign. Lineker scored twice more against Paraguay in the round of 16.

The quarter-final therefore placed the tournament’s most influential creator against its leading scorer. Yet the first half was defined less by finishing than by attempts to contain Maradona. England fouled him repeatedly, and Terry Fenwick was booked inside the opening ten minutes.

The match remained goalless at half-time. Then five minutes changed its moral and artistic meaning.

The goal that should not have counted

Maradona drove towards England’s penalty area and attempted a pass to Jorge Valdano. The ball rebounded away from the forward and travelled towards Steve Hodge. Trying to clear it, Hodge hooked the ball backwards into his own penalty area.

That touch mattered. Maradona was not penalised for offside because an England player had deliberately played the ball. The question became whether he could reach it before Shilton.

Shilton advanced and jumped with his right hand extended. Maradona jumped beside him and used his left fist to make contact. From the referee’s position, the movement was partially hidden. The ball looped into the goal.

Maradona ran away celebrating while looking back to see whether the officials would intervene. Several Argentina teammates initially hesitated. He urged them to join him, understanding that a convincing celebration might help the decision survive.

England’s protests failed. There was no video assistant referee, no replay review and no mechanism capable of correcting a missed handball after the referee awarded the goal.

Maradona later described it with the phrase that gave the incident its permanent name: a little with his head and a little with the hand of God. The line was playful, evasive and provocative. It turned an act of deception into mythology without changing what had happened.

The goal was illegal. It should have been disallowed. Saying that clearly does not require pretending that the story ends there.

The goal nobody could dismiss

Only minutes later, Héctor Enrique passed the ball to Maradona inside Argentina’s half. Peter Beardsley and Peter Reid moved towards him. Maradona turned, pushed the ball into space and accelerated.

The move lasted roughly eleven seconds.

Maradona carried the ball through midfield with Reid chasing. Terry Butcher stepped across and was beaten. Fenwick tried to close the path and could not. Maradona reached the penalty area with the ball still close enough to change direction at speed.

Shilton came forward. Maradona touched the ball around him, stayed upright as Butcher challenged from behind and finished into the empty net.

The run began inside Argentina’s half and removed a sequence of England players from the contest. Its brilliance was not simply the number of opponents beaten. Maradona changed speed, direction and stride length while keeping the ball within a controllable distance. Every touch solved the next problem before the defender could impose it.

The contrast with the first goal was absolute. England could argue that the officials had failed them in the 51st minute. In the 55th, the officials were irrelevant. The goal contained no hidden infringement that could make it disappear.

FIFA later recognised it as the World Cup Goal of the Century. The title can sound like marketing, but the goal’s endurance is easy to understand. It compresses the qualities associated with Maradona—balance, acceleration, control, imagination and defiance—into a single movement.

England refused to disappear

The second goal did not end the quarter-final. England changed the match by introducing Chris Waddle and John Barnes. Barnes attacked Argentina from the left and created the goal that restored danger.

In the 85th minute, he crossed for Lineker, who headed in from close range. It was Lineker’s sixth goal of the tournament and would help him win the Golden Boot.

England nearly equalised through the same route. Barnes delivered another dangerous cross, and Lineker moved towards the far post. Julio Olarticoechea intervened before he could finish.

Argentina survived. They beat Belgium 2–0 in the semi-final, with Maradona scoring both goals, then defeated West Germany 3–2 in the final. Maradona supplied the pass for Jorge Burruchaga’s winner and lifted the World Cup as captain.

The England match became the defining chapter because it held every argument about Maradona at once.

Genius does not erase wrongdoing

Football often tries to simplify its heroes. Greatness is easier to celebrate when it arrives without discomfort. Maradona resisted that simplification.

The Hand of God was not clever because it succeeded. It was an offence the officials failed to detect. England’s anger was justified, and the final score cannot be discussed honestly without acknowledging that the opening goal should not have stood.

The Goal of the Century does not cancel the handball. A beautiful act cannot retrospectively legalise an earlier one. But the handball does not make the second goal less extraordinary either.

Both truths have to remain visible.

That is what makes the five-minute sequence so difficult to replace with a cleaner legend. Maradona did not move from villain to hero in separate seasons or different phases of his career. He occupied both roles in the same match, against the same opponents, before the scoreboard had settled.

The sequence also exposes the limits of sporting memory. Supporters do not remember events only according to the rules. They remember emotion, injustice, skill, identity and the stories told afterwards. For England, the first goal remains a theft. For Argentina, it became connected to victory, national pride and Maradona’s language of symbolic revenge. For neutral viewers, the second goal remains one of football’s purest demonstrations of individual control.

None of those perspectives can claim the entire match.

Five minutes that contained a career

Maradona finished the 1986 World Cup with five goals and five assists. He dominated the tournament to a degree rarely achieved by one player. The quarter-final was not his only great performance, but it became the clearest symbol of his power.

In the first goal, he recognised that the officials could be deceived and acted before anyone else. In the second, he recognised space that seemed not to exist and created a route through it. One action exploited human limitation. The other overwhelmed athletic limitation.

The match therefore resists a final verdict. If it is told only as cheating, it loses the wonder of the second goal. If it is told only as genius, it excuses an injustice that changed a World Cup quarter-final.

Football did not receive one Maradona at the Azteca. It received both versions within five minutes.

The first left England asking how the goal had been allowed. The second left them asking how any player could have scored it.