The hand of God. Mexico. 1986.

Photograph copied on cotton paper with museum quality (2020) on the three negatives of the original sequence of the photo The Hand of God. This copy is signed and numbered by its author: 1/10. Measures 30 x 60 cm / 11.81 x 23.62 in. The work is exhibited framed.

It happened on the afternoon of June 22, 1986, in the quarterfinals of the World Cup in Mexico. Argentina and England, rivals with history on the pitch and much more, just four years after the Malvinas War. In the albiceleste, Diego Maradona wore 10 and just six minutes into the second half and with the scoreboard nailed to zero, began the play that made history. He tried a wall with Jorge Valdano that he could not control, causing a bad rebound from the English defender Hodge. The number five left for his area and Maradona jumped next to the giant goalkeeper Peter Shilton, who was surprised to go after the ball. In the air, dislodged, biting his teeth, the Argentine striker rose and lifted with his clenched fist into the air. He hit the ball and everyone, millions on television, the one hundred and fourteen thousand spectators located in the Azteca Stadium, his teammates from the Argentine team, the referee and the linesmen saw him enter. An incredible goal. The English immediately protested, claiming that he had been converted by hand. Maradona replied: "Yes, with the hand ... The hand of God." The rivalry on the field had other edges after that very recent War, and this match installed Diego Maradona at the pinnacle of world football. A few minutes later he scored a second goal - the game ended 2-1 for the Argentines - this time with a masterful play started in his own field, and after eluding five rivals, he again beat the giant's goal. Shilton.

Maradona declared later in his book I am Diego: “As I replied to an English journalist, from the BBC, a year later: It was a totally legitimate goal, because the referee validated it. And I am not the one to doubt the honesty of a referee ”. That moment was captured by the camera of the Argentine photographer Eduardo Longoni. On the morning of June 22, 1986, Longoni, barely twenty-six years old, had already covered the 1982 World Cup in Spain, took a taxi to get to the Azteca Stadium and, as you can imagine, traffic was impossible… He almost didn't succeed. “Getting there was an odyssey, and I was wrong, on the left post of one of the goals, not far from where the play happened. I had a long lens, a 300mm, that I couldn't use from there because it closed the angle a lot and I had the net of the arch that left me half of the playing field without the possibility of photographing; I did it then with a short 85 mm one. " His camera was a Nikon FM 2, and he got the miracle shot. A work of art. Here we present the enlarged photographic copy of these only three contacts in the sequence, copied by the photographer himself, signed and numbered by him: copy number 1 of ten.

Eduardo Longoni (Buenos Aires, 1959), Argentine photographer and teacher, has forged his style in photojournalism, in addition to participating in individual and group exhibitions, made numerous photography books, won national and international awards, and his shots illustrate books published in various nations. In 2018 he was the protagonist of a title published by Fondo de Cultura Económica, the work of Mexican historian Alberto del Castillo Troncoso: “Photography and Memory. Conversations with Eduardo Longoni”.

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