When the Nutmeg team sat down to discuss how we’d go about writing this piece, the first question that was mulled over was the extent to which Diego Maradona’s performance at Hampden against Scotland in 1979 had been gilded over the years by those who witnessed it.
TV cameras were excluded from Hampden following a dispute between the BBC and the Scottish Football Association over broadcast rights and so there is only the attestation of those who were there – not to mention some extremely dodgy video footage – to go on.
The memory plays tricks, and we wondered if with the passage of time some recollections may have exaggerated the feats of Maradona that day. But research soon established the consistency of eyewitness testimony. The little Argentine had indeed put on a display for the ages, a sublime mix of the interplanetary, the divine and the jaw-dropping. Maradona, still stung by his omission from Cesar Luis Menotti’s World Cup-winning squad, announced his arrival on the international stage in devastating fashion…