Auction in Paris

Golden ball auctioned off: Maradona heirs sue

Diego Maradona with his Golden Ball, 1986(Bild: AP/AP1986)

Diego Maradona's heirs want to take legal action to prevent a rare trophy belonging to the former soccer world star from being auctioned off. The Golden Ball, which the Argentinian received as the best player at the 1986 World Cup in Mexico, is to go under the hammer in Paris at the beginning of June. The trophy had been lost for decades, but recently reappeared and could be auctioned off for several million euros.

Two of Maradona's daughters want to prevent this, as their French lawyer Gilles Moreau told the AP news agency on Tuesday. The heirs of the footballer, who died in 2020 at the age of 60, claim that the trophy was stolen and rightfully belongs to the children. The lawyers want to stop the auction by the Aguttes auction house in Neuilly-sur-Seine near Paris with an urgent application.

World champion 1986
Maradona won the 1986 World Cup with Argentina and scored two legendary goals in the quarter-final against England - one with his hand ("Hand of God") and one after a solo run, which is considered the most beautiful goal in World Cup history. In addition to the World Cup trophy, he also received the Golden Ball as the tournament's best player.

The trophy was lost for 35 years and there was much speculation about its whereabouts. It may have been stolen from Maradona's safe deposit box in a bank in Naples in 1989. In 2016, a collector in France bought it with a number of other trophies for a few hundred euros without initially knowing what it was. It was only later that the authenticity of the Golden Ball was established by two experts.