Diego Maradona biographer and Spanish football expert Guillem Balague tells the story of how the Argentina number 10 inspired the World Cup glory at Mexico 1986.
Diego Maradona was carrying a lot more than just his boots. He brought with him the hopes and dreams of a nation still struggling financially and emotionally from a war fought four years before.
When Maradona and his Argentina team-mates won the tournament, they did so as ambassadors of a nation which in that one summer regained its pride.
It was a World Cup that saw a 25-year-old Maradona at the peak of his physical prowess despite the growing evidence of the addiction that would, in time, ravage his body.
The entire group built around Maradona's needs as Argentina entered the tournament with only one real hope.
"I hope he doesn't wake up, he may not be able to sleep and it's my fault if he does," said Olarticoechea, who shared a room with him.
The Mexico World Cup provided little in the way of facilities. Those available to the Argentine side were more like the primitive infrastructure they had to deal with in their homeland rather than what might be expected of the biggest football competition on the planet.
One telephone and one television were located in the dining room of the Club America residential quarters. The players had to fit the shades on their unfinished rooms. Four people had to stay in rooms 100 metres away from the players' quarters because the rest of the facility looked bad.
All players received the same amount of money from the Argentina Federation.
Rather than breaking the squad, it strengthened them.
"When you agreed to go to 'the shed', you were actually saying that you are willing to do everything, to live in bad conditions, to do things on and off the pitch that you didn't like," said the player who scored four goals.
The need to share everything helped the group become more and more homogeneity. It's the biggest change in my life.
With games being played at altitude and in the middle of the day, in order to appease television schedules around the world, they needed to remain united and help each other. "Get on with it" was what Joao Havelange told any protesters.
It was for the good of the game. The protests with Maradona about the kick-off times were for the good of business.
Following the team's first win against South Korea, superstitions and pre- match routines grew. The most banal practices became custom so that they wouldn't break the spell.
Some players were reprimanded by the team doctor after they were caught eating hamburgers in a shopping center.
Two Aerolineas Argentinas pilots brought in meat for the barbecue.
The players sat in the old bus that took them to the stadium.
The phone rang when they got to the changing room, but there was no one on the other end.
When Carlos Tapia got to the stadium, he shaved his head, while Maradona made a figure on the ground with boots, a shirt and socks, which nobody was allowed to walk over.
Olarticoechea was recorded asking other squad members questions as if he was a journalist, thanks to a camera bought by Clausen.
In Argentina, mate is a tea-like drink.
At exactly five o'clock, Carlos Bilardo called his wife.
There was a sweet in the middle of the field.
Argentina scored three times.
Italy was the next opponent. The rebels ate hamburgers again, Aerolineas pilots brought meat for a barbecue, players took the same seats on the bus, and Maradona recreated his invisible man, Olartico.
A man more inclined to read books than dance with fate said of the rituals: "I am very respectful of personal superstitions but I am perturbed by collective ones." It was like a play that had been performed a thousand times when we won the title.
Daniel Passarella, the first Argentine to lift the trophy, and a man who enjoyed a cigarette and a glass of Scotch, had a bad World Cup.
Passarella went down with a serious bout of diarrhoea after the team was told not to drink the local water. He trained as usual two days before the game but relapsed. He lost a lot of weight in a short period of time.
He tore a muscle in his left leg after returning to training. The doctor said the player had intensified his training without permission, while the player said he broke down after being forced to play.
He believed there was a conspiracy between Maradona and Bilardo to sideline him.
Passarella made for the beach by packing his bags and making for the beach.
We were breaking our souls while he was sunbathing in Acapulco, Maradona wrote.
Passarella was admitted to the hospital on the eve of the quarter-finals with a colonic ulcer. Maradona didn't want to go to him.
The scene was set for a quarter-final against England after a draw against Italy, a two-goal victory over Bulgaria and a single goal victory against Uruguay.
This was going to be more than just a game because of the atmosphere created by the media.
Maradona said it was just football. He was the only one who didn't believe it.
He said before the game that football had nothing to do with the war. It's rubbish!
The English fans shouted "Bring on the Argentines, we want another war!" during their last-16 match.
The former Argentine soldiers sent telegrams to the team to recreate the performance of the missiles.
The Argentina squad were relieved to have had a break after a long time between games.
The team had been told they would have to play in a dark blue second kit, but Bilardo wanted different shirts because the ones they had were heavy and unbearable.
The problem was that Le Coq Sportif didn't have time to make the shirts the team wanted.
Argentina's technical assistant Ruben Moschella and kit man Tito Benros were given the task of finding a shirt for the World Cup quarter-finals. They narrowed it down to two colors, one similar to the existing kit and one brighter blue.
"Oh no, not that one," said Bilardo, only to have the wind taken out of his sails when Maradona walked in. The English will be defeated with this one.
The coach told them to go with this one.
The kit men and Club America employees embroidered numbers on to the bright blue shirts in a silver-grey fabric normally used by American football teams, and the coat of arms of the Argentine before the game.
Terry Fenwick, the no-nonsense central defender with a record number of yellow cards in the World Cup, sent a message when he was selected to play for England.
"Don't worry Terry, he's little, fat and he's only got one foot," Bobby Robson was quoted as saying to him. He would have been haunted by the words for the rest of his life.
Brown talked about the feelings of the players. It was like I put a knife between my teeth when they played the national anthem. He wanted to see if he could win a match.
My normal life was gone. We all believed the same thing. We didn't talk about the problems of Las Malvinas.
The first half was pretty mundane for a game that will be remembered as one of the most significant of all time.
Maradona showed the world the two extremes of his on- pitch character: the cunning, opportunistic cheat and the unstoppable, unplayable, footballing maestro. Do you mean knight or knave? It's almost definitely both.
He was transformed in the eyes of his nation when he performed.
The 'Hand of God' goal in the 51st minute came after an accidental volley from Steve Hodge that turned into a back pass.
The goalkeeper reacted too late to go for the ball and it should have been Peter Shilton.
Maradona was the first to jump for it. He shaped his body as if he was going to head the ball, then punched it as it bounced into the net.
The referee from Tunisia and the linesman from Bulgaria were the only two people who saw the incident.
The refereeing commission was told by Dochev that he had seen Maradona's hand but didn't disallow the goal because the referee had already awarded it.
One of the greatest goals ever scored was scored three and a half minutes after the controversy. Had Bin Nasser whistled for a foul on Glenn Hoddle prior to the goal, it would not have happened.
As Maradona embarked on a mazy run from inside his own half that ended with him calmly slotting the ball into the net to put his side 2-0 up, there was a lot of brilliance.
The game changed the lives of many English people.
England's hard-tackling centre-back Fenwick had set out to unsettle Maradona, only to see him come back on to the pitch after receiving treatment and breeze past him in the second half on his way to scoring what was dubbed the "Goal of the Century"
Fenwick's last full appearance for England was against Israel in the quarter-finals of the 1988 Olympics. After England's elimination from the World Cup in Mexico, he was bitter and twisted for 20 years.
If he had not been booked for foul on Maradona early in the game, he probably wouldn't have made his way to Shilton's goal.
The team-mates of Maradona would become national treasures in Argentina. If Maradona had missed the quality of the pass that I gave him, I would have killed him.
Shilton said that he never forgiven the number 10 because he didn't apologise for it. He wouldn't invite Maradona to hisTestimonial.
The response was acidic. My heart hurts because he didn't invite me. How many people attend a goalkeeper'sTestimonial? A keeper?
Chris Waddle said a lot of England fans wouldn't forgive Maradona for what he did. Gary Lineker would be hailed as a hero if he had done it at the other side.
When he swapped shirts with Maradona at the end of the match, he didn't know how much it would change his life. He guaranteed his future and that of his descendants. The shirt was on loan to the National Football Museum in Manchester for 20 years, and in May of this year it sold at an auction for a record price.
The ball that was put into the net by Maradona was going to be sold for up to 3 million dollars.
What is the owner of the ball? There was a match referee.
The surprise package of the tournament wasBelgium.
The stalemate was broken on 51 minutes after the victory over England. A through ball from Burruchaga and a delightful lifted finish from the outside of Maradona's left foot gave them the lead.
After picking the ball up some 40 yards out, a straight run that eliminated three defenders and a change of direction put Argentina's number 10 through, Maradona struck it past him a second time.
Maradona's brilliance was once again the deciding factor in the match. It took 12 minutes. After the best individual display ever seen in a football World Cup game, Argentina were in the final where they faced West Germany.
It was Maradona's quietest game in the knockout stages.
Two goals from Karl-Heinz Rummenigge and Rudi Voeller gave West Germany a 2-2 draw against Argentina.
There was a bouncing ball in the center circle. Maradona got it back after heading to his right. With two opponents closing him down and two others blocking his way, he spotted burruchaga about to launch a diagonal run on the right.
He let the ball bounce twice before threading through an inch- perfect pass to meet the runner. It was the strikers third touch that sent it into the corner.
The best pass of his career was given to him by him. I don't know where to run those final metres.
The World Cup was going back to Argentina because of Maradona's decision making at the time.
It was his fifth assist of a tournament where he had scored five goals, meaning he had been involved in 10 of his team's 14 goals and hit half of the shots on target.
The players took a lap of honor around the training ground after they came back to their base.
Their celebrations were limited to that. The directors of the Argentine federation wanted to make sure they had first class seats on their flight home, so they didn't plan anything else.
It should have been better.
The bonds between the brothers in arms gradually became strained and backbiting.
In the 1990 World Cup final, Maradona's country was defeated by West Germany. He was banned for 15 months in 1991 for testing positive for cocaine, after his career took a turn for the worse. He was sent home from the US in 1994 after failing a drugs test.
The same balcony from which Eva Peron delivered her famous speech to her "beloved des camisados" was where he stepped on to the World Cup balcony.
He would never be as happy as he was that day.
The World Cup icons series on the British Broadcasting Corporation.
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