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How Argentina won the 1986 World Cup: The relentless brilliance of Diego Maradona

November 16, 2025
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This is the 13th in a series by The Athletic looking back at the winners of each men’s World Cup.

Previously, we’ve looked at Uruguay in 1930, Italy in 1934 and again in 1938, Uruguay in 1950, West Germany in 1954, before a Brazilian double in 1958 and 1962, an England success in 1966, another Brazil win in 1970, a second West Germany triumph in 1974, Argentina’s long-awaited win in 1978 and Italy’s third in 1982.

This time, it’s Argentina’s second triumph, in 1986.

Introduction

For the second time in five editions, the 1986 tournament was hosted by Mexico. For the second time in three editions, it was won by Argentina.

Their victory was, more than any World Cup triumph before or since, about one player. Diego Maradona was unstoppable throughout these finals, so this Argentina side are sometimes looked at as limited and otherwise lacking top-class players.

This would be unfair. The point isn’t that the others in the team weren’t very good, it was that Maradona was on a different level.

Maradona celebrates scoring an equaliser against Italy in the group phase (Allsport/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The manager

Carlos Bilardo was cast as the polar opposite of Cesar Luis Menotti, who had led Argentina to glory on home soil eight years earlier. Menotti was a footballing romantic who spoke about the game in relation to philosophy. Bilardo was renowned as a hardman from the aggressive Estudiantes club side of the 1960s who won the Copa Libertadores three times in a row.

“For Menotti, football is joy,” said forward Jorge Valdano in Chris Hunt’s 2006 book, World Cup Stories. “For Bilardo, football is part of the mission of an army that fights for every inch of the battlefield.”

Hugely unpopular going into the tournament in Mexico, Bilardo emerged from it a national hero, not merely for the side’s success but for the freedom he granted Maradona.

A banner among the Argentina supporters at the final read, “Sorry, Bilardo. Thank you.” But Bilardo never softened his act. As Argentina celebrated in the dressing room after the final, he told them to calm down and remember they had to defend the trophy in four years.

Carlos Bilardo was a hardman as a player and a manager (Trevor Jones/Allsport/Getty Images)

Tactics

Bilardo received plenty of criticism before the tournament for his selections, but he was handicapped by a lack of top-class wingers and relatively modest strikers, too.

But he knew what this side was going to be all about: Maradona.

Every other manager in the competition would have appreciated that, but not every manager would have made him their captain. For all Bilardo’s focus on tactics, on strength, on stopping the opposition and keeping a clean sheet, he allowed his players freedom in the final third, and Maradona enjoyed a free role beyond anything imaginable in the modern game.

In that sense, Bilardo could be considered somewhat ‘Italian’ in style: defensive, yes, and a game based around a spare man and two aggressive markers, but prepared to entrust one magician to do as he pleased in the final third.

The precise system, as is so often the case for a World Cup’s eventual winners, changed midway through the tournament.

Broadly, it was a 3-5-2 — at that time an unfamiliar formation — with Maradona deployed behind two strikers in the opening matches, but for the quarter-final with England, Bilardo dropped striker Pedro Pasculli (unusually, considering he scored the winner in the previous round against Uruguay) to bring in an extra midfielder. Maradona then became more of a second striker, playing off Valdano.

This created the system that eventually became regarded as Argentina’s default setup. But they stumbled onto it late in the day.

Star player

The unheralded defensive midfielder Hector Enrique w… no, it was Maradona, obviously.

This is the outstanding individual campaign by any player in any World Cup. Even Pele in 1970 was not at the level of Maradona here, partly because Brazil had four other world-class players as well as Pele in that tournament 16 years earlier. Brazil also didn’t really have a system in 1970, whereas Argentina very much had one in ’86 built around one man.

Argentina’s first two goals of the finals, in their opening 3-1 group win over South Korea, were symbolic. Twice, Maradona was chopped down cynically by opposition defenders. Twice, the resulting free kicks led to goals, scored by Valdano and Oscar Ruggeri.

The question throughout the tournament was how to cope with Maradona. Did you man-mark him, or use a zonal system and ask everyone to keep half an eye on him?

Maradona was fouled a record 152 times at World Cups between 1982 and 1994 (Allsport/Getty Images/Hulton Archive)

The zonal system proved unsuccessful. The problem was that the man-marking approach was unsuccessful, too: Italy used his Napoli club team-mate Salvatore Bagni up against him in a 1-1 draw in the second group match, and Maradona escaped his attentions to slide home an equaliser from a tight angle. Uruguay’s Miguel Bossio was handed the job in the round of 16, but Maradona produced what he later say in World Cup Stories was “by far my best performance of the World Cup… because I didn’t lose a single one-versus-one. I got past every Uruguayan player I came up against. I was always in the right place.”

But Maradona is chiefly remembered for his displays against England in the last eight — more on that shortly — and then Belgium in the semi-finals. In those 2-1 and 2-0 wins, he scored all four goals.

Against Belgium, he opened the scoring early in the second half by running onto Jorge Burruchaga’s through ball and finishing cleverly with the outside of his left foot, then 12 minutes later dribbled past four defenders before smashing a shot home.

The defining moment

How can you separate the two? In the space of five minutes against England at Mexico City’s Azteca Stadium, Maradona produced two of the most famous moments in World Cup history: the disgrace of the handball and the brilliance of the dribble.

The background to the match was the 74-day Falklands War between Argentina and the United Kingdom four years earlier. “In the pre-match interviews, we all said that football and politics shouldn’t be confused,” Maradona later wrote in his autobiography. “But that was a lie. We did nothing but think about that. B*****ks was it just another match!”

Without wishing to excuse Maradona’s obvious act of cheating, it should be acknowledged that England’s treatment of him in this match was disgraceful: repeatedly attempting to injure him with bad tackles and flailing elbows. It was beyond anything South Korea or Uruguay had attempted earlier in the competition, and, once you’ve seen several slow-motion replays of Englishmen whacking Maradona, you feel less sympathy for them when he knocks the ball into the net with his hand, after a misdirected Steve Hodge clearance looped up into the air between him and goalkeeper Peter Shilton.

Maradona’s infamous opening goal against England in the quarter-final (Allsport/Getty Images)

And then, with England still seething about the injustice of that 51st-minute opener, Maradona scored the best individual goal in World Cup history.

It starts with a double-drawback to beat Peter Beardsley and Peter Reid inside his own half, then there was a change of speed to beat Terry Butcher and then Terry Fenwick, and finally (as he later recalled, remembering how he’d poked a shot wide against Shilton at Wembley six years earlier when he could have gone around him) he took the ball past the ’keeper and finished into an empty net.

“On a playing surface that was so poor, to do what he did was truly extraordinary,” Gary Lineker, who played up front for England in the game, told Talksport in 2020. “It was the only time in my career where I genuinely felt that I ought to put my hands together and applaud that goal. A part of me was also gutted. It was definitely the best thing I’ve ever seen on a football pitch. It’s the best goal that’s ever been scored.”

And this was a perfect, five-minute summary of everything about Maradona: the scandal and the sensational.

By hook or by crook, this was going to be Maradona’s tournament.

You might be surprised to learn…

Maradona dribbled past 53 players during this tournament. That sounds a lot in itself, but in comparison to others, it’s mind-blowing: the guy in second place beat 16 opponents. Yes, he played more games than most, since Argentina reached the final, but Maradona went by three times as many players as anyone else.

His second goal against England, of course, was the most obvious example of his dribbling ability. “It hardly belonged to so rational and rationalised an era as ours, a period in football when the dribbler seemed almost as extinct as a pterodactyl,” wrote Brian Glanville in UK newspaper The Times.

Maradona prepares to round Shilton to score his spectacular second against England (AFP via Getty Images)

The final

As Rob Fielder points out in his Complete History of the World Cup, in the 1986 final, West Germany did what they had done in the 1966 edition: used their best player to mark the opposition’s best player. In 1966, it was Franz Beckenbauer on Bobby Charlton of England. Twenty years later, it was manager Beckenbauer ordering Lothar Matthaus to play up against Maradona. And in a way, it worked: Maradona had his quietest game of the four knockout ties, and was booked early on for dissent.

The Argentinians were helped by goalkeeper Harald Schumacher having a poor game. In the first half, he came out flapping at a corner to allow Jose Luis Brown to head a corner into an empty net, and 10 minutes into the second half he was slow to come off his line and close down Valdano, who had time to look around, work out what was happening, check for support, and almost reluctantly put the ball into the net rather than pass.

Argentina were coasting to victory.

West Germany had an aggressive game plan for Maradona, which worked for much of the final (Mike King/Allsport/Getty Images/Hulton Archive)

But then the Germans came back into the game out of nowhere — somewhat similar to what France did against Argentina in the 2022 World Cup final, as it happens. Beckenbauer made two attack-minded substitutions, increasing the level of pressure, if not their creativity.

West Germany’s two goals were very similar: an Andreas Brehme corner, a flick-on into the six-yard box, a headed finish. First, it was Rudi Voller flicking on for Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, then defender Thomas Berthold flicking on for Voller. It was 2-2 with 81 minutes played. Argentina, you suspected, were about to collapse.

Instead, they found a winner three minutes after that equaliser. With West Germany now lacking defenders on the pitch — and no substitutions left to reinforce their back line — Argentina had space to attack into.

Finally, Maradona produced a decisive contribution, half-volleying a through ball in-behind for the eternally onrushing Barrachuga, Argentina’s second-best performer in this tournament, to slide a finish beyond the immobile Schumacher.

For most of the final, it felt like Argentina would win comfortably; in the end, they won it dramatically.

Were they definitely the best side?

In a curious tournament that was widely regarded as a good World Cup despite the relative lack of outstanding sides, the caveats about Argentina’s success come from refereeing decisions in the quarter-final and semi-final: Maradona’s opener against England clearly shouldn’t have stood, and Belgium were twice wrongly flagged offside at 0-0 when through on goal three days later.

But it seems fair to consider that Argentina were the best side.

France played some great football but were ultimately beaten 2-0 by old foes West Germany in the other semi. Denmark were exciting but then were thrashed 5-1 by Spain in the last-16. They made the final but nobody thought the Germans were any good, even themselves.

Argentina weren’t an outstanding side from one to 11, but they were a solid unit, and they had the 1986 World Cup’s best player by a country mile.




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