The Soccer Ball Used for Diego Maradona’s ‘Hand of God’ World Cup Goal Sells for $3.35 Million at Auction

Despite its role in one of the most famous games in soccer history, the historic piece of sports memorabilia fell short of its $10 million pre-sale estimate

Christian Thorsberg | Daily Correspondent

August 26, 2026 1:02 p.m.

Share

Copy linkEmailSMSFacebookXRedditLinkedInBlueskyPrint

Add as preferred source

The soccer ball used for two of Diego Maradona’s most iconic goals has sold at auction for $3.35 million, well below its $10 million pre-sale estimate.

Maradona used the ball to score both of Argentina’s goals in their 2-1 victory over England in the 1986 World Cup quarter-final in Mexico City: the infamous “Hand of God” opener and another, scored just four minutes later. The high-stakes match came four years after the two countries clashed in the Falklands War.

The sale was part of Heritage Auctions’ Summer Platinum Night Sports Auction, where the ball was offered alongside items associated with some of the biggest names in sports history, including a rare Honus Wagner baseball card, game-worn jerseys from Lou Gehrig and Mickey Mantle, and memorabilia from Babe Ruth, Michael Jordan and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

“When it came in, I worked at Heritage for 20 years, and there’s been a lot of items that, when they arrived, they just shut down the whole department. This is on that list,” Mike Provenzale, the production manager at Heritage Auctions, told the Athletic’s Larry Holder and Asli Pelit prior to the auction. “It’s an item so iconic, even people who don’t know anything about soccer or know the event can realize the value behind the ball.”

That significance comes from a sequence that unfolded six minutes into the second half of the game.

It began when Maradona played the ball forward to teammate Jorge Valdano. Steve Hodge, a midfielder on England’s team, got a touch on it, sending it looping toward the penalty area, where Maradona and goalkeeper Peter Shilton raced to meet it.

The two players leapt, and more than 100,000 fans in Mexico City’s Estadio Azteca held their breath. What happened next would be celebrated in Argentina and met with outrage in England.

With better positioning than Shilton, Maradona appeared at first to reach the ball with his head and send it into the open goal, giving Argentina a crucial 1-0 lead in the elimination game. But English players immediately began protesting to the referee, holding their arms up high. While subsequent replays showed that Maradona used his left hand—not his head—to score, neither the referee nor his assistant saw the handball, and the goal stood. (Instant replay, a technology that had just begun reaching American football that same year, wouldn't be introduced to the World Cup until the 2010s.)

After Argentina secured a 2-1 victory, punching their ticket to the tournament championship, Maradona famously quipped that he had scored the opening goal “a little with the head of Maradona and a little with the hand of God.”

Four minutes after the “Hand of God” goal, Maradona scored his second goal of the match, which was later voted the FIFA World Cup Goal of the Century.

Years later, in his autobiography, Maradona rejected the “Hand of God” label, writing that it was “the hand of Diego” and comparing the moment to picking the Englishman’s pocket, according to Sports Illustrated’s Grey Whitebloom.

Diego Maradona Goal of the Century | Argentina v England | 1986 FIFA World Cup

Watch on

“The British outcry resonated throughout the soccer world,” Chris Ivy, Heritage Auctions’ director of sports auctions, says in a statement. “One of the proudest soccer nations in the world felt like a victim of one of the most significant miscarriages of justice in the history of the sport…Their disappointment was legitimate, but it does nothing to take away from two of the most spectacular goals in the history of the sport.”

Ali Bin Nasser, the Tunisian referee who officiated the match, took posession of the ball after the game, claiming that FIFA protocols bestowed ownership to him. He kept it for 36 years, before selling it at auction in 2022 for $2.37 million.

The ball’s $3.35 million sale this week is roughly one-third of the $9.3 million that an anonymous buyer paid in 2022 for the jersey Maradona wore in that game. The jersey set an auction record at the time for sports memorabilia, a mark that was surpassed later that year, BBC reported.

Christian Thorsberg is an environmental writer and photographer from Chicago. His work, which often centers on freshwater issues, climate change and subsistence, has appeared in Circle of Blue, Sierra magazine, Discover magazine and Alaska Sporting Journal.