Maradona’s Hand of God does England a favour

MOSCOW: Nothing will ever quite make up for that dastardly act in Mexico in 1986 but the Hand of God did do England something of a favour here.

Diego Maradona drew the balls from Pot 2 and put Gareth Southgate's side in Group G, with a relatively modest amount of travelling and a relatively easy task of progressing to the last 16.

Belgium remain tough opponents and England will do well to beat Roberto Martinez's side when they are ranked fifth in the world, but Tunisia and Panama should not represent an insurmountable task even if some of Southgate's players did contrive to lose to Iceland.

The Three Lions face Roberto Martinez's much-fancied Belgians in Kaliningrad in their final group game, and will begin their tournament against the Tunisians — just as they did at France 98.

Belgium have beaten England only once in 21 meetings — back in 1936 — but the side that boasts Kevin De Bruyne, Eden Hazard and Romelu Lukaku is a fearsome beast.

The match also puts Tottenham teammates Eric Dier and Jan Vertonghen against one another — which they marked with a Snapchat together captioned “Group Friends”.

The middle game comes against debutants Panama — who provide another link to 1998, as they are managed by Hernan Darío Gomez, who coached Colombia against England in France.

At one stage there was a 50-50 chance of either Brazil or Germany but host Gary Lineker joked that Maradona was good with his hands and so it proved once more, the Argentina legend only drawing England with two balls to go.

When they were then placed in G4, that left them facing a 1,081 mile trip from their training base in Rapino, near Saint Petersburg, to Volgograd for their opening game. Daily Mail