England star gets €8.4m for Maradona shirt
THE shirt in which Diego Maradona broke English hearts with his infamous ‘Hand of God’ goal gave one of the beaten England team the last laugh yesterday.
Steve Hodge, who swapped shirts with the Argentina captain at the end of the World Cup match in 1986, saw the iconic blue number 10 jersey fetch more than €8.4million at auction. Last-ditch attempts by an Argentinian delegation to snap up the piece of sporting history failed, with the successful bid believed to have come from Abu Dhabi. Maradona was wearing the shirt when he used his hand to nudge the ball over goalkeeper Peter Shilton in the quarter-final match in Mexico City, deceiving match officials who – long before the advent of video referees – wrongly believed he had headed it into the net. Minutes later, Maradona dribbled through England defence to score a second goal ranked among the best of all time. After the match he was quoted as saying his first goal had been made ‘a little with the head of Maradona, and a little with the hand of God.’
He later described his cheating as ‘symbolic revenge’ for Britain’s victory in the 1982 Falklands War. Maradona would go on to lift the World Cup after Argentina beat West Germany in the final. Hodge had long declined to sell his souvenir of England’s 2-1 defeat, lending the jersey to the National Football Museum for the past 20 years. After Maradona’s death aged 60 in November 2020, Hodge denied suggestions he had been trying to cash in on it. But last month the former Nottingham Forest, Aston Villa and Tottenham Hotspur midfielder, who played 24 times for England, said he changed his mind.
Sotheby’s two-week online auction resulted in the shirt fetching €8,491,789 – a world record for a piece of sporting memorabilia and almost €3.5million more than the previous highest amount paid for a jersey. The Argentinian delegation – consisting of Maradona’s family, a private memorabilia firm and the country’s football association – are believed to have bid €6.5million for the shirt. Hodge, 59, has not commented on yesterday’s sale.