Man, let me tell you how this whole thing started. It wasn’t because I suddenly woke up and decided to be a sports historian. Nah. It all began because my central air conditioning unit decided to give up the ghost right in the middle of a brutal August heatwave. A complete disaster. The spare bedroom where I usually lock myself away to work hit like, 105 degrees. I had to ditch my main coding project for the week and just sit in the living room, sweating like a pig, waiting for the HVAC guy to show up with the impossible-to-find compressor part.
I was stuck like a chump, and boredom, as it always does, led me to a stupid argument I’d had with my buddy Mark a few months back over beers. He was screaming about how football ethics today are broken, and somehow we landed on the ‘Hand of God’ goal from the 1986 World Cup. I was like, “Dude, we all saw it. It was a foul, end of story.” He kept saying, “Yeah, but you gotta watch the referee’s angle and the actual rules of that time.” That little nugget stuck with me.
So, there I was, drenched in sweat, with nothing but my old laptop and three days to kill. I figured, okay, I’m going to run a proper investigation on this. Not some Wikipedia glance, but the whole shebang. Settle the stupid argument and document my findings just for the fun of it. That became my “practice” for the week.
The Hunt for the Evidence
First thing I did was try to locate the cleanest footage possible. Didn’t just want YouTube clips from 2005. I started with old sports archival sites, the kind that are super slow and look like they were designed in 1998. Took me about four hours just to find a version that didn’t look like it was recorded on a potato. I downloaded three different angles—the main broadcast, an overhead shot from behind the goal, and one from the corner flag that was mostly useless but hey, why not.
Next step was the hardest part: figuring out the 1986 rule book. This drove me nuts. I didn’t want the current FIFA Laws of the Game. I had to find the exact text from the International Football Association Board (IFAB) governing rules back then. Nowadays, it’s all PDF and easy to find, but for 1986, I was digging through scanned library documents and forum posts from guys who clearly collect this stuff. It took me a solid day of squinting at blurry JPEGs to confirm the exact wording for Law 12, covering “Fouls and Misconduct.”
- The rule confirmed a penalty for “handling the ball intentionally.” No shocker there.
- The key was whether the referee “saw it” and whether the action was “intentional.”
The Frame-by-Frame Execution
I finally had the tools: clean video and the rulebook. I fired up my old video editing software—the basic one that lets you scrub slowly—and began the analysis. This is where the practice gets real granular.
I focused on the moment Shilton, the England goalie, jumped up to punch the ball away and Maradona rose to meet it.
Step 1: The Take-Off. I noticed how both players were almost level. Shilton was higher because he’s taller and jumping from a stationary spot, but Maradona had momentum. The approach was cunning.
Step 2: The Contact Point. I went frame by frame. It was impossible to argue. The ball clearly hits his hand first. And I mean clearly. It wasn’t the top of his head deflecting onto the hand; it was a definite, deliberate motion where his left arm came up and punched the ball past the keeper. I was screaming at my screen, even though I knew the outcome.
Step 3: The Intent. This is subjective, but look at the follow-through. His eyes are on the keeper, not the ball initially. The hand comes up in a striking motion. If you look at the reaction of the goal scorer immediately after, he starts celebrating and then glances toward the referee. It’s that slight hesitation, that little look-over-the-shoulder that tells you, even he knew he’d pulled a fast one. That, to me, sealed the “intentional” part of Law 12.
The Final Log and Takeaway
So, what was the conclusion of my sweaty August investigation?
It was a foul. Absolutely a foul, according to the letter of the law in 1986. The referee, Ali Bin Nasser, just blew it. He was badly positioned and relied on his linesman, who seemed to think the ball came off the head.
But here’s the unexpected takeaway, and why I bothered with the practice: the moment it was scored, it stopped being just about the law. It became a piece of folklore, a story greater than the game itself. The lack of technology, the human error, the immediate political backdrop—it all cooked up this crazy, legendary moment.
In the end, I confirmed what I already knew: a handball. But I also learned that sometimes, the practice of digging deep confirms the facts, but the historical context you uncover changes the feeling of the answer. It’s a foul, but honestly, I wouldn’t change it. It’s too good a story. The AC unit was fixed three days later, but the itch to dig into these old records? That stuck around.