Maradona’s World Cup

Mexico 1986. Quarterfinal, Argentina against England, four years after a war in the South Atlantic. Diego Maradona punches the ball into the net. He calls it the Hand of God. Minutes later he picks up the ball in his own half and runs through England as if they are cones. The Goal of the Century. Two kinds of genius in one afternoon.

Argentina wins the World Cup. Maradona is the tournament. For a country, he is more than a No. 10. For soccer, he is the proof that a single player can still bend a World Cup after the game has become a system.

The hand is cheating. The run is art. The sport has never been able to tell those two stories apart, because they happened to the same man on the same day.