The ball Diego Maradona used to score football's most notorious goal has changed hands again, fetching £2.5 million ($3.35 million) at Heritage Auctions in the United States on Saturday — a striking figure by any normal measure, but a disappointment against the roughly $10 million the auction house had forecast.
The Adidas Azteca ball was the one Maradona punched past England goalkeeper Peter Shilton in the 1986 World Cup quarter-final in Mexico City, a goal he later explained, with a smirk that has followed him into legend, as scored "a little with the head of Maradona and a little with the hand of God." Minutes later, with the same ball, he scored the solo run past five England defenders now widely remembered as the Goal of the Century, ONE reports.
Argentina won the match 2-1 and went on to lift the World Cup that summer.
The ball's post-match custodian was Ali Bin Nasser, the Tunisian referee who was standing close enough to see the infringement and chose not to call it, letting the goal — and Maradona's mythology — stand. Bin Nasser kept the ball for more than three decades before first selling it at auction in 2022 for $2.37 million.
Its new owner tried to flip it again in 2023, but bidding fell short of the reserve and the sale collapsed. This weekend's sale at Heritage Auctions was its next attempt to find a buyer, and this time it went through, even if well below hopes.
"It's a true one-of-one item," Heritage specialist Mike Provenzale said of the ball. "Arguably the most significant soccer item that exists."
The buyer was not disclosed. For comparison, the Argentina shirt Maradona wore in the same match sold for £7.1 million in 2022 — nearly three times what the ball made this weekend, underlining how differently collectors have valued the era's two most famous artefacts from that single, chaotic afternoon in the Azteca Stadium.
