Diego Maradona for the winning goal in the final, ensuring that he would be remembered as one of the greatest names in football history. By the end of the World Cup, Maradona went on to win the Golden Ball as the best player of the tournament by unanimous vote and was widely regarded to have won the World Cup virtually single-handedly, something that he later stated he did not entirely agree with. Zinedine Zidane, watching the 1986 World Cup as a 14 year old, stated Maradona “was on another level”. In a tribute to him, Azteca Stadium authorities built a statue of
The hand of God the goal. After the first half, the game was still tied. Maradona was beginning to unbalance the match, and when the sixth minute of the second half came, one of the most controversial moves in the history of the World Cup came: Maradona took the ball out of the box and with his left leg passed it to his teammate Jorge Valdano, who tried to take it among several English defenders, but the ball was intercepted and thrown back and forth, in his eagerness to clear, by defender Steve Hodge. Because of the inertia of the play, Maradona would have