How many of the 114,580 crowd had paid to see Morera rather than Maradona was never ascertained.ĥ) Usherettes wandered through the stands carrying trays of up to 15 ready-poured lagers, dispensing them hither and yon. In the end, Maradona got one of the snappers to shift out of the road, and with a grim inevitability, sent the set piece straight into Peter Shilton’s hands. So Maradona slowly and carefully resheathed the pole, in surprisingly good humour under the circumstances, given he was being pestered during the biggest match of his life by an official whose time might have been better spent ordering the photographers to move, rather than asking the greatest footballer in the world to perform several basic haberdashery tasks. Maradona balanced the material over the top of the pole – but even that wasn’t good enough for Morera. But the flag had fallen off the top, and Morera demanded that went back on too. Before he could take the corner, linesman-jobsworth Berny Ulloa Morera demanded he replace the pole.
Concluding that moving these fine gentlemen of the press would require the implementation of the biggest engineering project in Mexico City since the first shovel broke ground at the Azteca in 1961, Maradona instead whipped out the pole so he could attack the ball from another angle. Sorry for any challenging mental images we might have just left you with, by the way.Ĥ) The game suffered a preposterous hold-up for two minutes towards the end of the half, when Diego Maradona shaped to take a corner on the right but found his path to the ball blocked by a row of corpulent photographers beached along the byline. And certainly rarely more than once in a single match. You don’t see that sort of skill every day. Unluckily for England, the effort billowed the side-netting, inches away from a strike of the most stunning solo sass. Pumpido scampered after him in hot pursuit, but was soon written out of the story as Beardo went burlesque: a sultry, slinky, bom-chicka shake of the hips, feinting left to send Pumpido skittering off towards the byline, then a smooth and sexy swish back through 180 degrees to the right, fashioning just enough time and space for a whipcracked shot towards the unguarded goal. Beardsley, who had not given up the chase, was first to the loose ball. The ball clanked off his shin and out of the area. But the goalkeeper made the most basic of misjudgments, mistiming his run to meet the ball and slipping as he attempted to readjust.
The pass was too heavy, and out came Nery Pumpido, breezing across to gather. Glenn Hoddle raked a long ball down the right channel for Peter Beardsley to pursue. Clever referee! Clever Ali Ben Nasser (Tunisia)! You’d need to get up a lot earlier than midday on a Sunday to catch Ali Ben Nasser (Tunisia) out!ģ) On 13 minutes, perhaps the best snippet of individual skill in the entire 1986 tournament up to that point. A lovely touch, a small gesture of friendship, and to think everyone had been banging on about bad blood caused by the Malvinas conflict.Ģ) The referee and his two linesmen spent the minutes leading up to kick-off loitering in the spiral shadow covering the centre circle, wishing the woofers and tweeters in the stadium PA were a hundred times more powerful, large enough in fact to cast the entire pitch in shade. A wonderful tableau of the relaxed atmosphere in the Azteca before kick-off, both sets of supporters in good humour, the Argentina team handing each England player their own personal pennant. Here are 10 things that happened during a first half everyone’s long forgotten about:ġ) Just before kick-off, instead of focusing on the players warming up in the oppressive sun, the Mexican television director chose to zoom in on a topless man necking the final third of a plastic cup of lager while sucking hard on a cheroot, having clearly been caught in two minds over which craving to sate first. Rattín’s Revenge! Or, in the offices of various tabloid newspapers and the heads of the slow: Falklands II. H igh noon, one blistering Sunday in Mexico City, and a quarter-final shootout between two arch rivals who hadn’t met in a World Cup for 20 years and had grievance on their minds.