England national football team manager selecting former West Bromwich Albion teammate Don Howe as his chief coach. Robson's tenure included 28 qualifying matches, of which only one, against Denmark in 1983, resulted in a defeat. This contributed to England's failure to qualify for Euro 1984, and Robson offered his resignation. It was rejected by the FA chairman, Bert Millichip, and Robson went on to lead the England team to qualify for the 1986 World Cup in Mexico. England were defeated in the quarter-final by Argentina with a brace of goals from Diego Maradona; the infamous "Hand of God" goal, and the "Goal of the Century"
God Hand contained some comic relief, the team decided to integrate a large amount of comedy into the game based on the viewers' reactions. Inaba stated that "God Hand" is "aimed at hardcore gamers," which is shown in its hard difficulty. Unlike "Viewtiful Joe" and "Ōkami", the design team had no particular goal when designing the graphical style of "God Hand" other than that they wanted it to look more realistic. Although "God Hand" appears to share many elements with manga and anime such as "Fist of the North Star" and "MD Geist", none were actually used as inspiration for the game.