A bit of football history • 06.21.06
Since we are in WorldCup season, I guess it is unavoidable to talk about football. While watching some matches last week in the US with American colleagues and with Japanese colleagues in Tokyo this week, I have been trying to educate them a bit about football since many of them they either do not know anything about it (not even the rules) or they only know the very, very recent history (from Beckman and on). For instance, no one gets how good is the Adidas commercial that says "Jose+10" basically because they do not know who Platini or Beckembahuer are or what is to play football on the streets. Another football celebrity that is on TV a lot this WorldCup (the previous one he was not allowed to enter Japan or Korea due to his past legal issues) but that is not very well know either in the US or Japan is Maradona, Diego Armando Maradona so I have been trying to educate them about him since he is someone worth talking about.
So today is the 20th anniversary of a historical day in football history, the day that Maradona scored with the “hand of God” against England and the day that Maradona also scored in the same match, what is considered the best goal in World Cup history, check it out in the video below (my first YouTube embeeded video in this blog), the quality is pretty bad but you can get what he did.
Listen also carefully to the English commentator saying “for God’s sake, someone stop this guy!!! It is hilarious. To put things in historical perspective, Argentina had lost just a couple of months before this WorldCup match a war against England, the Malvinas War (or the Falklands War as it is known among anglosaxons) so they were expecting revenge in the field and they did get it big time.
Argentina, after beating England that day, went on to win that WorldCup in a final match against Germany where Maradona played against a key role with a deadly passed towards the end that put Argentina up 3-2 and gave them their second WorldCup win.
CD

