On June 22, 1986, a Sunday at noon, the Azteca Stadium was a giant, breathing beast towering over Mexico City. Outside, the sun beat down with the obstinacy of days that ask no permission. Inside, however, the world seemed to shrink.
The visitors’ locker room smelled of stale food, dried sweat, and damp cement. The gray walls seemed to absorb any attempt at joy. The wooden benches were worn smooth by decades of tense bodies, by fingernails scratching at anxiety, by hands that had sought strength on a hard board. The yellowish, dim light made everything look a little sick, as if the place itself knew it was about to witness something unrepeatable.
There were twenty-two men in that confined space, and none of them spoke. It wasn’t the normal silence of a training camp, nor the muteness of a tactical discussion. It was a dense, almost physical silence, as if each one were holding a word stuck in his throat, afraid to speak.
In a corner, alone, with his elbows resting on his knees and his gaze fixed on the concrete floor, stood Diego Armando Maradona. He was twenty-five years old. He was 1.65 meters tall. He weighed seventy kilos. He was the captain of Argentina and, at that moment, he seemed both younger and older at the same time, as if time had used him as a bridge.
In the stands, 114,000 people waited. But Diego heard nothing. The roar of the stadium arrived muffled, as if it came from another planet, another century. Inside the locker room, only the present existed: the smell, the harsh light, the heat trapped in the walls… and that match, which wasn’t just a match, even though everyone kept saying it was.
Four years earlier, in April 1982, Argentina had sent troops to the Falkland Islands. Seventy-four days later, it was all over. Six hundred and forty-nine Argentine soldiers never returned. Most were kids: eighteen, nineteen years old. Young men who hadn’t yet lived long enough to understand why they were there, facing something for which no one had prepared them.
Diego was twenty-one then. He was in Barcelona, preparing for the World Cup in Spain. He remembered the hotel television: different versions, conflicting accounts, European images that reflected back a truth that hurt like a sharp blow. And now, four years later, in Mexico, he found himself sitting just minutes away from playing against England.
All week long, journalists had been pressing the issue: “Does this match have anything to do with that?” The players, ever disciplined, repeated their script: “Football is football. Politics is politics. It has nothing to do with it.” Nobody believed them. Not even those who were saying it.
Three meters away from Diego stood Jorge Valdano. Forward, reader, writer, one of the few capable of putting into words what everyone felt. That day, however, he too was speechless. He looked at Diego and saw something he had never seen before: a strange stillness, a concentration that seemed almost violent, as if beneath his skin there were an orderly storm brewing, waiting for the precise signal to break the sky.
Valdano recalled something he had written in a column: that this match would be ideal for confusing the fools, those who confuse football with other things, those who believe that a goal can change what has already happened. But sitting there, listening to the silence of the locker room, he wasn’t so sure anymore. Perhaps there were things that were never truly separated. Perhaps no one ever really separated them.
In the other corner stood José Luis Brown, Tata. A central defender, twenty-nine years old, with a battered knee that had almost kept him out of the World Cup. Without a stable club, suffering from chronic pain, he had arrived as a backup to Daniel Passarella, the legendary captain. But Passarella fell ill, and Tata took his place. Brown looked at Diego the way one looks at someone who, without saying a word, is carrying the weight of an entire country on his shoulders.
Óscar Ruggeri walked towards the bathroom. He was twenty-four years old, with a reputation as a tough guy, the kind who doesn’t back down even against the odds. He wasn’t afraid of anyone, but as he passed by Diego he felt something he couldn’t explain: an electricity in the air, like before a storm that hasn’t yet arrived.
Ruggeri had heard the stories of the boys who never came back. Those who were cold, those who waited for letters that never arrived, those who returned and could no longer speak. He didn’t know any of them personally, but he knew people who did. Argentina was a small country in that sense: everyone knew someone who had lost someone.
The clock read 12:20. Ten minutes until they went out into the tunnel. Then Bilardo came in.
Carlos Salvador Bilardo, the most criticized coach before that World Cup. The press had torn him apart during the qualifiers. Politicians used him when it suited them. He himself had to change his daughter’s name to protect her from threats. Bilardo was a man the world demanded certainty from, and he responded with obsessive dedication. He believed in this team, in his system… and above all, in Diego.
Bilardo looked around. He saw players praying silently, others staring into space, others moving their legs as if they could run inside the bench. They were all waiting for something: a speech, a spark, a phrase that would break the tension.
But Bilardo didn’t speak. He just looked at Diego and nodded.
A minimal, almost imperceptible gesture.
Diego raised his head. And then it happened.
He stood up slowly. All eyes turned to him. The locker room fell into absolute silence, so profound that even the noise of the stadium seemed to fade away. Diego wasn’t a man of speeches. In press conferences, he said the bare minimum. In interviews, he repeated stock phrases. But this wasn’t for the media. This was between them.
Diego looked at his companions one by one, as if he needed to confirm that they were there, that they were together. And he spoke in a low, firm, unadorned voice.
—Listen… there are 100,000 people out there. Half of them have come to see us lose.
Pause. Nobody breathed.
—We said all week that this is just football…
Another pause, longer, as if the air refused to pass.
—That’s not true, and everyone knows it. There were kids our age… who could be here… and they’re not.
Her voice lowered even further, almost to a whisper.
—That’s in the past. We can’t change it. But this is now… and this does depend on us.
Silence.
—Don’t think about tactics. Don’t think about any of that. Just remember them when you cross that line.
He looked towards the tunnel door.
—Let’s go. That’s all.
There were no shouts. There was no applause. Only the sound of twenty-two pairs of boots rising and walking toward the light.
Tata Brown would remember that moment for the rest of his life. Years later, he would say that Diego spoke “about the kids” and then said, “Let’s go.” Simple, direct. But what he could never explain was what he felt: absolute clarity, a purpose that wasn’t just about sports, a sense of inevitability, as if everything—the injuries, the sacrifices, the pain—had been a stepping stone to that instant.
The first half ended 0-0. Argentina dominated possession but couldn’t score. England defended with discipline. Shilton responded when needed. The English defenders marked Diego roughly. Fenwick fouled him several times. The referee allowed play to continue. In the halftime locker room, Diego said nothing. He had already said the only thing that mattered.
51st minute. Diego received the ball near the penalty area. He attempted a one-two with Valdano. The English defense cleared, and the ball floated awkwardly, like an object without an owner. Steve Hodge tried to clear, but the ball looped back towards his own goal. Shilton came out. He was 1.83 meters tall. Diego was 1.65 meters tall. Logic dictated that the goalkeeper would get there first.
But Diego jumped.
His left fist made contact with the ball a fraction of a second before Shilton’s hand. The ball went in.
Diego ran to the corner, celebrated, but as he ran he looked back: at the referee, the linesman. They saw nothing. His teammates hesitated. Everyone saw what happened. Diego gestured to them, like a child asking for the game to continue.
—Come here. Hug me.
And they embraced him. The goal stood. Years later, he himself would say: “It was the hand of God.” But that would come much later. At that moment, there was only confusion and the score in their favor.
Four minutes later, Diego received the ball in his own half. Sixty meters from the English goal, he had five defenders between him and Shilton. Everything was against him. And yet, he started running.
He passed to Beardsley. He passed to Reid. He kept the ball glued to his left foot as if it were sewn on. He entered the area. Butcher tried to tackle him. Diego dodged him. Fenwick stretched out his leg. Diego jumped. Shilton came out. Diego left him behind. And with the same left foot, softly, decisively, he pushed the ball into the goal.
On the radio, Víctor Hugo Morales shouted “Cosmic kite!” In the stadium, 114,000 people tried to comprehend what they had just witnessed. Diego ran to the corner. This time he didn’t look back. This time there was nothing to hide.
The match ended 2-1. Lineker scored, but it wasn’t enough. Argentina advanced to the semifinals, although that wasn’t the topic of conversation in the locker room yet. The atmosphere was quite different.
Back in the locker room, the silence returned, but it was different: it wasn’t tension, it was exhaustion. It was a silence like the lingering tremor after an earthquake, when the body understands it survived but still doesn’t know what to do with the emotion.
Diego sat down in the same corner, on the same wooden bench. His shirt was soaked. His eyes were red. His legs were trembling. Valdano approached and sat beside him. He didn’t say anything for a while. And then he asked, in a low voice:
—Did you think about them?
Diego didn’t look up. He just nodded. The whole time.
That was it.
Outside, in the streets of Mexico City, Argentinians were celebrating. In Buenos Aires, people poured into the streets. In every city and town, someone was shouting, hugging, crying. And in a cemetery in the south, where some of those who hadn’t returned from the islands rested, there was no one: only white graves, silence, and the Atlantic wind.
Diego never met those young men. He didn’t know their names. He never visited that place. But that day, in that locker room, before going out onto the field, he said something for them. A few words, in a low voice, just for those who were there. And then he went out to play.
Decades later, people continued to talk about that match: the handshake, the impossible goal, the rivalry, the myth. But almost no one talks about what happened before: the silence that preceded it, the stares fixed on the ground, the twenty-two men who listened, nodded, and left. Because some things can’t be told. Some things can only be felt. Some things remain between those who were there.
Maradona died on November 25, 2020. Argentina came to a standstill. Perhaps because it understood something it had always known, though rarely dared to say aloud: that Diego was not just a footballer. He was a form of memory. A way of remembering what must not be forgotten.
