I was eight years old by the 1986 World Cup, and since then I've heard a lot about Maradona's 'Hand of God' goal against the English Team. But however all the phrases of revolt and irony, and however the many angles of the videotape and photographs showing Maradona literally punching the ball before a deluded Peter Shilton could reach it, I couldn't see more precise a definition, more concise an extract, more definitive, meaningful (perhaps unintentional?) a description for that event as Maradona's response to a English reporter that once again repeated the question:
Reporter: "How did you make that goal? It was or wasn't with your hand?"
Maradona: "It was made with my head, and with the hand of God."
I like it so much because it's a "crosslinked" explanation, so to speak (for those of you who know micro-electronics it's pretty much like a flip-flop, which is a combination of two logic gates, the input of one being the output of the other, and vice versa).
There are two possible interpretations for this response, as I understant it:
-
I hit the ball with my head, and God gave a divine, all too ethereal hand.
-
I managed to cheat the referee using the cleverness of my thinking head, and hit the ball with my own hand.
First and easiest, you can consider just the first one, in which Maradona shows himself as just a
liar, for everyone except the referee saw what really happened. But with a little imagination you can also consider that what he was really trying to say is that
he is God (anyone familiar with Maradona's
megalomania knows this not only to be possible, but also very likely), and managed to cheat the referee by using his head to find out a way to beat
Peter Shilton.
This might be a bit anecdotal, but neverthless, se non è vero, è bene trovato.