It was already a mythical jersey, it is now the most expensive in the world. The tunic worn by Diego Maradona during the legendary 1986 World Cup quarter-final between Argentina and England was sold for more than nine million dollars on Wednesday May 4 in London. A record for a sports collector’s item, reached at the end of an auction organized by Sotheby’s and which got carried away in the last moments.
With our correspondent in Buenos Aires, Theo Conscience
With five minutes to go, the best offer was still $5 million. Then everything accelerated, and for a moment, the Argentinian collector Marcelo Ordas thought that the 6.8 million dollars he had put on the table would be enough to bring back the jersey of the idol. national on Argentine soil.
But 17 seconds from the end of the sale, his dream faded away. A “ middle east buyer “, according to Ordas, awarded the blue flocked tunic of the number ten of the Argentine football icon for the sum of 9.28 million dollars, smashing all records for collectibles related to sport.
The sale opened on April 20 amid controversy, when Maradona’s daughter Dalma questioned the jersey’s authenticity. She assured that the auctioned tunic had only been worn by her father in the first half, before scoring the two most famous goals of her career, the first from the hand and the second after a fantastic ride.
Sotheby’s refuted these claims, citing the expertise it had commissioned. And the controversy did not, it seems, discourage buyers, who scrambled until the last moment to try to acquire this precious relic.
►To re-read: “Hand of God” and “goal of the century”, the sale of Maradona’s jersey is debated