Diego Maradona and the Goal of the Century

 

Diego Maradona and the Goal of the Century

Diego Maradona was a famous Argentinian football player, that’s rest of the world football, not American football (which doesn’t involve much contact between your foot and the ball).

Diego is famous for his practically unequaled skills on the field when it came to controlling the ball. When other football players would get hit and be pretending to roll around on the floor Diego jumped back up and got the ball back. He would make bigger gambles on the field than what you could make at an online casino.

Diego Maradona played in four different world cups, winning more than one of them.

Goal of the Century

While that is all well and good probably the most well-known thing about Diego Maradona is his goal of the century as voted by members of FIFA.com in the year of 2002, where they rated goals from the previous 20th century.

Diego Maradona was playing in 1986 Football World Cup against England, where the game was at one to one.

Diego Maradona gets the ball and crosses almost the entire field, more than sixty meters, evading five different English players and scoring the goal that won them the game.

Everything about that goal is impressive and when you watch it you can understand why it is called the goal of the century. It is very very rare that something as impressive as this happens, and even more spectacular that it happens as the goal that the team needs to win the game.

But the story of the Goal of the Century doesn’t end there, because Diego Maradona also scored the first goal that his team got.

That one is arguably even more impressive than the goal of the century depending how you look at it.

That goal is of course none other than the Hand of God.

The ball is going towards the goal, England is defending hard.

Diego is running up and the ball goes into the air and Diego Maradona slaps the ball into the goal like he is playing a game of volleyball.

Yes, he slapped the ball. With his hand.

Yes, that is an extremely banned move. It’s like one of the biggest rules of the game.

The game is called football, and he isn’t American, so he’s supposed to touch the ball with his foot, not his hand.

The thing is he just kind of started celebrating. And the crowd also started cheering. The referee didn’t even call it out.

The English players of course were very vocal about their opinions on this goal but that didn’t change anything.

These were the days before any sort of instant replay for the referees or for anyone on the actual game field. No one really did anything because there wasn’t really anything to do.

Everybody just kind of went with it so the referee didn’t call it. It’s interesting to think that the game might have been lost by the Argentinians if that referee had actually called the penalty.

I guess that’s why they call that goal the Hand of God.

Diego Maradona outside of the field

Diego Maradona while being one of the greatest players ever, was not without his flaws. Flaws which he had a few of.

Early in his career Diego became addicted to cocaine, which significantly effected his health and football skills. He also had lots of problems with alcoholism and obesity.

He had to be given psychiatric help and institutionalized multiple times throughout his life along with getting multiple surgeries done for a large range of reasons.

In the early 2000s he said that he was completely rehabilitated, but there is some evidence to show that he may have had a few relapses.

Diego Maradona was also prominent with his political views, ranging from his dislike and condoning of Israel and it’s government, his complaints on the Iraqi wars and also how great friends he was with Fidel Castro, ex dictator of Cuba.