Football’s most infamous object was supposed to rewrite the record books. It didn’t. The ball Maradona punched past Peter Shilton in the 1986 World Cup quarter-final sold for $3.35 million (£2.5m) at Heritage Auctions on Saturday, well below the auction house’s own estimate of at least $10 million.
That is roughly a third of what Maradona’s match shirt from that same afternoon in Mexico City made at Sotheby’s in 2022. The jersey went for close to $9.3 million there.
Heritage had pitched the ball at a very different level. Its specialist Mike Provenzale had called the Adidas Azteca “arguably the most significant soccer item that exists”, and the estimate was set accordingly. The hammer eventually fell only $850,000 above the opening bid of $2.5 million.
36 years in Tunisia
The ball spent most of its life in North Africa. Ali Bin Nasser, the Tunisian referee who let the Hand of God goal stand and then watched Maradona score what FIFA later voted the Goal of the Century, took the ball home after the final whistle and kept it for 36 years before selling it for the first time.
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That first sale, at Graham Budd Auctions in London in 2022, brought £1.74 million ($2.37m). A second attempt to sell it in 2023 failed when bidding stopped at $2.04 million, below the reserve.
Below the record for a sports ball
Saturday’s price does at least improve on that first London sale. It still stops well short of the record for a sports ball at auction, held by Shohei Ohtani’s 50th home-run ball from 2024, which fetched $4.392 million.
Argentina’s 2-1 quarter-final win over England on 22 June 1986 remains one of the most replayed 90 minutes in the sport’s history, thanks in large part to the two goals scored by the same man inside four minutes with the same ball. The first was punched in past Shilton and let stand by Bin Nasser. The second was a run past five English defenders that has been argued over ever since.
Maradona described the handball goal as scored “a little with the head of Maradona and a little with the hand of God”. The line has outlived him. The shirt he wore that afternoon is still worth almost three times what the ball he punched brought at auction on Saturday.
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