-Arbitro corrupto! Arbitro corrupto!
We are sitting in the nosebleed section of Azteca Stadium on the outskirts of Mexico City, listening to hilarious chants from local soccer fans. I'm sitting so high that I feel dizzy and worry that my nose may actually bleed. I can’t believe I’m here. Azteca. The Cathedral of futbol. One of the most iconic venues in the world. My childhood dream of visiting this place has finally been fulfilled.
Azteca is enormous. A giant bowl can host almost 90,000 spectators, but it feels like it could hold even more. This evening, it's mostly empty as the Liga MX game between Cruz Azul and Pachuca is not quite a riveting affair. But rows of empty seats don't diminish the magic.
As I'm looking down on the field, I can barely concentrate on the ball. I'm still dizzy. My head is spinning. I take my eyes off the field and draw a deep breath. My childhood memories come rushing back at me.
I open my eyes and slowly look around.
The stadium is now full, not a single empty seat. I see a team in blue shirts advancing a ball down the field against a team in white shirts. The spectators around me look different with their haircuts and clothes no longer from 2019 but from the 1980s. I look at the scoreboard and there it is, clear as day:
Argentina-England 0-0.
The year is 1986. I am at the quarter-final of the FIFA World Cup.
I don't remember the 1986 World Cup. I was only three years old when it took place. Yet, as a kid, I watched the magic of that tournament on VHS tapes. One day, as I returned home from school, I found my dad and uncle in the living room watching Terminator 2 on the VHS recorder that my uncle borrowed from someone for a day. After they finished the movie, I was left alone with the VHS recorder and whatever was recorded on tape after the movie. I was glued to the screen as the VHS started to play the 1986 World Cup highlights. I watched it mesmerized. The program was in a foreign language, but it didn’t matter. The memory is still vivid, as this was the first time I saw those two goals and the magic of Diego Armando Maradona.
I also knew about the 1986 World Cup from obsessively reading (no less than 10 times!) the autobiography of a midfielder for the USSR national team and my childhood idol, Sergey Aleynikov, whose poster I had in my room for more than a decade. In his book, “Life, Tears, and Soccer”, he describes the World Cup, the difficulty of playing in Mexico at high altitudes, Azteca Stadium, Diego Maradona, and a scandalous elimination of the Soviet team caused by odd officiating by Swedish referee Fredriksson in the game against Belgium. The name of that villain referee (arbitro corrupto indeed) was seared into my childhood memory, and I still remember it more than 25 years later.
Back at Azteca, the second half is underway, and the scoreboard still shows 0-0. I'm sitting next to a middle-aged couple clad in the Argentinian blue and white colors. They speak Spanish with a distinct porteño accent, which is generally hated and considered to be pretentious by people outside of Buenos Aires and throughout South America. Right above me, two English lads are speaking in an unmistakable accent of industrial England. They are from Manchester or Birmingham, I conclude. The collective chatter around me in posh Spanish and proletarian English doesn't faze me at all. I'm intently staring at the field, anxiously waiting for something to happen. I know the script too well. I watched it and read about it so many times. The next five minutes will be written in soccer history.
The clock shows 50 minutes of playing time. A short, stocky player with flowing black hair in a blue shirt gets the ball near midfield. Diego. He moves effortlessly. The ball appears to be glued to his foot as he accelerates. With his dribbling moves, he leaves three English players to stare at his back. He passes, but his teammate connects awkwardly, and the ball goes to an English defender, who also can’t handle it properly. The ball bounces off his leg and soars into the air. Maradona—who just seconds ago passed the ball—is now all alone in front of the English goalkeeper, Peter Shilton. He jumps as high as he can and reunites with the ball, knocking it to the net with his head.
Goal!
But was it his head?
The English defenders collectively protest: he scored it with a hand! But Maradona is having none of this. He is charging toward the stands, celebrating without looking back. The Argentinian fans are jubilant. The Argentinian lady hugs and kisses me on the cheek. The English fans boo and scream “handball” from the top of their lungs. The atmosphere is a strange mix of confused celebration and indignation.
He did score it with a hand. There is no denying it, and video replays in slow motion clearly show his crime. If the game were played today, the goal would surely have been disallowed. But in pre-VAR simpler times, the game was all about here and now, no second looks. Keep your eyes open, or you'll miss it. Everything happened so fast, and the scoring contact was so instant that no wonder the referee missed the call. England's players keep pleading with the referee, but he sternly points to the center of the field. Diego continues his celebratory lap by hugging teammates and pumping his left fist into the air as if proclaiming, “Look, this is the Hand of God.” Let’s give him credit—he sold that goal with his unwavering celebration better than a late-night personal injury lawyer sells his services.
Had the game ended at 1-0, Maradona would've been the villain, eliminating a decent English team with his cheating handball. The “Hand of God” moniker would still probably have been coined, but the win against England and the following World Cup victory would've been forever marred by a goal that should've never counted. Yet, all these musings are irrelevant. As the game resumes, I know that in just four minutes, Azteca and the world will witness one of the greatest goals in World Cup history, providing total redemption and immortality to Number 10.
The ever-present Maradona, like Figaro, who is here and there, again gets the ball in the midfield. He moves so fast that he is barely touching the ground. He dribbles to the left and right, leaving behind player after player. By the time he enters the penalty zone, five English players are left behind. The entire stadium is breathless, anticipating his next move. He doesn't need to pass and needs no support from his teammates: they, like all of us, can only watch this moment of glory. Diego continues forward, pushes to the right of Shilton, and strikes again. 2-0.
No cheating, no foul play. Just pure greatness. The villain from five minutes ago redeems himself with this brilliant goal. “Goal of the Century?” It absolutely is. The stadium erupts, and this time, it's pure celebration. The Argentinian couple next to me is crying, raising their hands to the sky. Two English fans from above silently shrug their shoulders in disbelief at what they just saw. I am overjoyed, as I close my eyes to listen to the jubilant noise of Azteca.
Julia pulls me by the sleeve: “Are you okay? You are kinda quiet.”
“I'm fine.”
I look around, and the stadium is almost empty. The scoreboard shows Cruz Azul-Pachuca 4-1. The Mexican fans behind us keep yelling funny stuff in Spanish. The trip down memory lane is over.
Argentina would go on to win that game against England 2-1, as well as a semifinal against Belgium and a final against West Germany, all at Azteca. Diego would raise the World Cup trophy here. And over 30 years later, I would sit in this very stadium, just as breathless as I was when I first saw Azteca on TV as a child.
“It was a great game,” Julia says as we leave our seats.
“Yes, it was,” I say. “The greatest.”
Today is a year since we started this blog, to document all stories and shenanigans, all little details that fade from memory, all funny tidbits and hardships that come from being immersed in a foreign culture, thousands of miles away from home. For the last few weeks, I’ve been reflecting on why we travel as we do and why memories from our trips are important enough to warrant documenting here. Today’s entry is the result of these meditations. The awe with which I experienced life as a child, the love which I cultivated for various countries through watching the Olympics and world sports competitions, mysteries of ancient civilizations, and far-off places from pages of my Soviet-era textbooks I yearned to uncover; all of this I can now experience through the magic of low-budget airlines and a well-planned itinerary. If you told the seven-year-old me that this was possible, I wouldn’t have believed it. A part of me still doesn’t believe it.
To everyone planning trips this year to satisfy their inner child–Happy Travels!
