England Football: the Biography: 1872--2022 by Paul Hayward

Author:Paul Hayward
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
Published: 2022-10-27T00:00:00+00:00

25 Bobby Robson and the curse of Maradona

The death of Diego Armando Maradona on 25 November 2020 brought closure to England’s agonising about the 1986 World Cup. Finally, the majesty of Maradona across that tournament set the ‘Hand of God’ goal in context. Peter Shilton, the main victim, stayed loyal to the old resentment. Everyone else bowed to his majesty and laid the grudge to rest.

November 2020, or month nine of Covid, allowed a lot of letting go. As concern spread about dementia from heading footballs, Terry Butcher, that giant of English defending, turned his back on the old idea that images of him drenched in blood from a head wound against Sweden in 1989 were to be applauded. ‘There’s nothing macho about head injuries’ ran a back-page headline in the Daily Mirror. Butcher said he had been a ‘bloody fool’ to carry on against Sweden and now felt it would have been braver to come off. The shot of ‘Butch’ with blood cascading through a bandage and down his shirt had served for thirty years as a symbol of English pluck. But now he was decommissioning the myth.

Maradona as Lucifer went in the bin too as the world convened to marvel at his unplayability. The fact of Maradona punching the ball past Peter Shilton’s outstretched fist wasn’t altered. But its power to shock and offend receded. Members of Bobby Robson’s 1986 team spoke in reverential terms of the stocky genius who was their undoing in Mexico City. ‘The great narrator of Argentina’, as the journalist Alejandro Wall called him, was no longer an unpunished villain haunting England’s dreams. His magnificence as a player was reborn with his death. There was beauty in the requiems and the mourning.

Glenn Hoddle, the most naturally gifted member of England’s 1986 side, had suffered a cardiac arrest two years before Maradona’s heart gave way and identified with the tragedy. ‘I was very, very close to going myself,’ Hoddle said as he eulogised Maradona’s affinity with the ball. Steve Hodge, who swapped shirts with Maradona and placed the blue No. 10 jersey in the National Football Museum in Manchester before selling it at auction in 2022 for £7m, said days after the death: ‘I have to say I have never once blamed him for the handball. Not once. It was out of order but people who play football know that you try things now and again.’

‘I’m no saint, but I was bitterly disappointed with the first goal. He cheated,’ Peter Reid, who played in midfield that day, says now. ‘But I never let it cloud my judgement of what a player he was. And whatever you say, he’s been one of the best players to walk the planet. He had his demons – the drug abuse, we know about that – but when he was on the park in full flow he was something else.’ For Maradona’s second – Fifa’s official goal of the century – Reid chased him down the pitch but could only watch him dart and jag away.

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