It’s been five months since Steve Hodgeformer midfielder now 60 years old, made a lot of money by auctioning the Argentina shirt he wore Diego Armando Maradona scored twice for England in the quarter-finals of the 1986 World Cup in Mexico. On that day – and on the following days with the title victory – the Pibe myth laid its solid foundations in football history and at the final whistle it was Hodge who won the precious inheritance by exchanging his shirt for Maradona’s.
After swearing for more than half his life that he would never give up the shirt given its priceless sentimental value, Hodge did the math and changed his mind, pocketing the monstrous sum of more than €8 million in his pocket last May. Maradona’s ‘t-shirt’ number 10 at Sotheby’s. But the former England player won’t be the only one to thank him for stepping onto the field that day at the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City.
In the last hours, in fact, the announcement arrived that another equally precious heritage and that played a leading role on June 22, 1986. will be auctioned by those who zealously guarded it for 36 years: the ball with which Maradona first scored the goal of Mano de Dios mocking Shilton and then doubled it after five minutes realizing what went down in history as the ‘goal of the century’ . A sphere that, if it could speak, would speak of magic, of how that foot blessed by the football gods caressed her, bending her to his will.
This ball at the end of the game was caught by the referee of the match, the Tunisian Ali Bin Nasser, who kept it locked in a locker all this time.. Now, at 78, he’s decided to go to the cashier, just like Hodge did before him. And who knows if maybe the idea came to him when he read the crazy amount raised a few months ago by the former midfielder. “This ball is part of the history of international football – he said – seems like the right time to share it with the world“.
Ali Bin Nasser always accused the line assistant for the sensational carelessness of Maradona’s goal: “I couldn’t see the action clearly and following FIFA’s instructions issued before the tournament, I asked my linesman to confirm the goal was valid: he returned to the midfield line indicating that he was convinced the goal was valid. At the end of the match, England manager Bobby Robson told me I had done a good job, but the linesman was irresponsible.“.
The former Tunisian referee is expected to raise between 3 and 4 million euros for the ball when it is auctioned on November 16 in London, but the number could go even higher, as Maradona’s previous shirt auction shows, in which a new record was set for a sports-related article. After all, if that ball is worth that much, part of the credit goes to Ali Bin Nasser who validated Mano de Dios…
Source: Fan Page IT
I’m George Gonzalez, a professional journalist and author at The Nation View. With more than 5 years of experience in the field, I specialize in covering sports news for various print media outlets. My passion for writing has enabled me to craft stories that capture the attention of readers all over the world.
