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The Adidas Azteca ball used by Diego Maradona to score both his controversial opening goal and subsequent solo masterpiece in Argentina’s 2-1 victory over England fetched $3.35 million at Heritage Auctions on Saturday, The Athletic reported. Bidding for the item opened at $2.5 million yet ultimately landed well below the pre-auction projection that had been set near $10 million. Heritage Auctions had positioned the photo-matched ball as potentially the most famous in the history of any sport and anticipated it could challenge records for soccer memorabilia.
The quarter-final match at Mexico City’s Azteca Stadium on June 22, 1986, produced two of the World Cup’s most indelible moments when Maradona first directed the ball past Peter Shilton with his hand and later dribbled through five English defenders before finishing. After the game the Argentine captain told reporters the first strike had been scored “a little with the head of Maradona and a little with the hand of God.” FIFA historical records continue to cite the encounter as one of the tournament’s defining fixtures.
Tunisian referee Ali Bin Nasser recovered the ball at full time and held it for more than three decades before its 2022 sale, a transaction supported by a signed provenance letter he provided in 2023 along with independent photo-matching that linked visible markings to images of both goals. The ball had changed hands for $2.37 million at that earlier auction before an unsuccessful 2023 attempt at Goldin Auctions where the highest bid of $2.04 million failed to clear the reserve, Bleacher Report noted. Its return to the block this year drew renewed attention to the artifact’s singular place in football lore.
Maradona’s jersey from the same fixture sold for just under $9.3 million at Sotheby’s in 2022, a mark later eclipsed by a Babe Ruth 1932 World Series jersey that brought $24.12 million at Heritage Auctions in 2024 and by Shohei Ohtani’s 50th home-run ball from 2024 that realised $4.392 million. Heritage specialist Mike Provenzale told The Athletic that upon the ball’s arrival two decades into his tenure the item halted department operations. “It’s an item so iconic even people who don’t know anything about soccer or know the event can realize the value behind the ball,” Provenzale said. “Having it photo matched to both goals is just the cherry on the top.”
A Market Decipher report published in June 2026 valued the global sports memorabilia market at $51.2 billion for the current year and projected expansion to $334 billion by 2036 at a 19 percent compound annual growth rate. The analysis highlighted North America’s 42 percent share of revenue driven by NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL ecosystems while noting World Cup collectibles as a significant growth driver ahead of the 2026 tournament. Soccer.com data drawn from more than 2,400 sold listings further illustrated wide price dispersion across World Cup eras with 1958 Sweden items averaging the highest resale values on the strength of Pelé-related artifacts.
The latest transaction arrives more than five years after Maradona’s death in November 2020 and continues a pattern in which items tied to his 1986 campaign command premium prices. According to The Athletic the ball’s new owner remains undisclosed while the sale concludes a multi-year journey that began when Bin Nasser first offered the keepsake publicly. Industry observers cited in multiple reports view the result as confirmation of sustained collector appetite for provenance-backed relics from football’s most storied matches.
