What's the best moment in the history of the World Cup?

What else could it be? The best goal in World Cup history, scored by one - if not the - of the best players in history. That is of course Diego Armando Maradona.  

Eleven seconds was all that Diego Maradona needed to make football history. The iconic images of that day, whether still or moving, are fixed in the memory of all soccer fans who were alive and even in generations who weren’t yet born.

Not long after the infamous little cheat (or hero, depending on your point of view) had punched his side in front with his ‘Hand of God’ goal, Maradona then went on to score the greatest goal ever seen on the world stage. Taking the ball up in his own half, Maradona started sprinting and slashing, beating every player that stood in his way before slotting it past the helpless Peter Shilton. Simply brilliant!!!

Maradona’s feat is even more extraordinary when you consider that the match was fraught with political tension lingering from the Falklands War. Argentina surrendered the Islas Malvinas to England on June 14, 1982 (one day after the opening match of the 1982 World Cup), and memories of the conflict still rankled many of the players and spectators.

It is the most iconic moments in the history of football, with one of the greatest No.10s of all time tearing the Three Lions apart. 

Victor Hugo Morales was calling the game on Radio Argentina. Morales’s ecstatic commentary of Maradona’s second goal is itself iconic in Argentina, and his lyrical expression “Barrilete cósmico!” (Cosmic kite!) is now shorthand in Argentina and much of South America for Maradona. His narration is a frenzied mix of poetry, yelling, and sobbing that ends with a prayer: “Thank you, God, for football, for Maradona, for these tears, for this — Argentina 2, England 0.” Morales’s poignant, minute-long paean to soccer and Maradona’s genius is an exorcism. While a goal in a soccer match could not eradicate the pain of the Falklands War, it enabled a momentary release for Argentina and a symbolic balancing of accounts. He later said, “the most transcendent moment in my career as a commentator” — and notes that it is the only thing that will survive him. “When I am nothing more than bones or dust, someone will listen to this goal.”

In 2002, the goal was voted 'Goal of the Century' as part of the build-up to the World Cup in Japan and South Korea.

About the goal, Maradona said, "I made the play to give it to Valdano, but when I got to the area they surrounded me and I had no space. Therefore, I had to continue the play and finish it myself."He later complimented the fair play of the English team, saying, "I don't think I could have done it against any other team because they all used to knock you down; they are probably the noblest in the world".

Maradona’s Hand of God shirt sells for £7.1m

More than anything else, this game made Diego an immortal among football fans - and there was no greater act than the Goal of the Century.

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