Goal of the Century

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For other uses, see Goal of the Century (disambiguation).

The Goal of the Century, also known as "Greatest Goal in FIFA World Cup History", was an award given for the greatest goal ever scored in a FIFA World Cup finals. It was decided by a poll on the FIFA website [1], as part of the coverage of the 2002 FIFA World Cup tournament.

The winning goal was the second goal by Diego Maradona in the 1986 FIFA World Cup quarter-final match, for Argentina against England on June 22, 1986, at the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City; it came shortly after Maradona's infamous Hand of God goal. Nine minutes into the second half, Héctor Enrique passed the ball to Maradona some ten metres inside his own half. Maradona then began his 60 metre, 10 second dash towards the English goal, leaving behind five English outfield players (Hoddle, Reid, Sansom, Butcher and Fenwick) as well as goalkeeper Peter Shilton to make the score 2-0 to Argentina. Gary Lineker scored a goal for England 25 minutes later, but England was unable to equalize and Argentina won 2-1.

About the goal, Maradona said, "I made the play to give it to Valdano, but when I got to the area they surrounded me and I had no space. Therefore, I had to continue the play and finish it myself." A statue of Maradona immortalizing the moment has been erected outside the stadium.

Recently, Maradona said he could not have scored such a beautiful goal if it had not been against the honest English team, who did not knock him down as most defenses used to do. "They are probably the noblest in the world," he added.[2]

On the goal, English striker Gary Lineker said "[it was] probably the one and only time in my whole career I felt like applauding the opposition scoring a goal."[3] Lineker scored the only English goal of that match.