15:12 JST, May 8, 2024
PARIS – The Golden Ball that Diego Maradona received in 1986 when Argentina won the World Cup in Mexico will go under the hammer, according to the French auction house Aguttes, which will organize the auction.
Maradona, who died in November 2020 at the age of 60, received the trophy as the best player of the event.
The gold trophy is approximately 28 centimeters high, has a diameter of approximately 15.8 centimeters and weighs approximately four kilograms. The auction will take place on June 6 in the Paris suburb.
According to the online edition of France Football, a specialized football magazine in France, the trophy went missing in 1989 when it was stolen from a bank in Naples, where Maradona was playing at the time. In 2016, a man at an auction in Paris successfully bid several hundred euros on a number of trophies and noticed that one of them was Maradona’s missing trophy. The man reportedly expects the trophy to fetch between €12 million and €15 million (approximately ¥2 billion-¥2.5 billion).
Maradona helped Argentina win the World Cup by scoring the ‘Hand of God’ goal and sprinting past five opponents to win a point. In 2022, a uniform he wore fetched approximately £7.14 million (about ¥1.16 billion at the time) at auction.
