SIX MONTHS after the shirt worn by Diego Maradona during the notorious 1986 World Cup quarter-final was sold for £7.1 million, the football used during the same match has been put up for auction by Graham Budd Auctions Ltd and is expected to fetch between £2.5 and 3 million as part of a collection of World Cup memorabilia being offered for sale over the next two weeks.

The ball is being auctioned by the referee from the game, Tunisian Ali Bin Nasser, who infamously failed to spot that Maradona handled the ball past Peter Shilton for the first goal, which has became known as the “Hand of God.”

Immediately after the game, Bin Nasser claimed possession of the ball, which he asked the three other officials from the game, Bogdan Dotchev, Berny Ulloa and Idrissa Traore to sign, and has kept it at his home in Tunisia until now.

The authenticity of the ball has been verified by extensive image analysis called resolution photo-matching.

In an era before the multi-ball system was introduced at World Cups, video footage of the game proves that the same ball was used throughout the entire 90 minutes.

The ball has lost its air pressure over time and the auctioneers came to the conclusion that reinflating it will cause damage to its inner layers.

Now aged 78, Bin Nasser was due to be at Wembley for a launch event but was unable to travel.

Instead three of the players from the England team who played in the game, Terry Butcher, Kenny Sansom and Peter Reid came face to face with the Adidas Azteca ball which they last encountered as they went out of the World Cup 36 years ago, losing 2-1 to Argentina in Mexico City.

Reid and Butcher were among the five players Maradona ran past during his unforgettable slalom for the second goal which is referred to throughout the world as “The Goal of the Century.”

Maradona began the run by pirouetting away from Reid who chased him back in vain, unable to get close enough to tackle him.

“I now sometimes still dream about it, believe it or not,” he told me. “You know that dream where you can’t get there? Even now, when you go out, someone will go ‘why didn’t you catch Maradona?’ You think, ‘no-one’s asked me that before?!”

Reid reveals that his attempts to chase Maradona were hindered by an ongoing injury which was to keep him out of the majority of the following season in which he eventually helped Everton regain the English league title.

“Unbeknown to me, I went into the tournament with a stress fracture. I’d had an X-ray and it didn’t show up. They only found out about it much later. I kept getting a whack on it, then it was alright. Looking back, I had a problem there, definitely. I know you can tell!”

If he had his time again, Butcher is adamant he would have fouled Maradona as the Argentinian began his dribble run on the halfway line and accepted the inevitable yellow card.

However, Reid admits that taking Maradona down was no easy task.

“Believe it or not, I nailed him about three times during the game, he just bounced off me. Besides being brilliant technically, he was as strong as an ox.”

During the World Cup, Reid was sharing a room with Steve Hodge who revealed to him that night he had swapped shirts with Maradona immediately after the game.

At the time, an angry Reid was distinctly unimpressed but in May, Hodge put the shirt up for auction at Sotheby’s and it was eventually sold for a world-record fee for any item of sporting memorabilia. 

Amid the current collection of historic World Cup items being auctioned by Graham Budd Auctions Ltd, an Argentina shirt from the same match worn by Nestor Clausen, not even named among the five official substitutes on the day, has received a bid for £10,000.

Used match tickets from the match sell for up to £500, illustrating the enduring global fascination with this match. Reid insists he has no regrets over failing to obtain a souvenir from the game for himself.

“I was that disappointed,” he tells me. “It never came into the equation.”

Reid, who never played in another World Cup match after 1986, told me he bears no grudge against the late Maradona, who passed away in November 2020.

“I met him a few times. I’ve got a shirt that Diego Maradona gave to me. He signed it ‘To Peter, lots of love my friend.’ He was funny. He made fun out of me when he had a chat through an interpreter. He was just like us, having a laugh. 

“The first goal is a cheat, the second goal is genius, that’s why the game is so iconic. That’s why the ball is going to go for, the money it’s going to go for.”

The ball from the match remains on sale until November 16.