Can someone explain to a soccer novice why this goal is special? It looks similar to lots of others to my untrained eye.
Now try to imagine people trying to hack you down (totally normal defending back then) and tugging your shirt, in the blazing heat, at altitude, against a team that humiliated your country in a war a few years earlier...and instead you waltz around all of them, make them look amateurish, and knock them out of the biggest sports tournament on the planet at a sport they invented.
Soccer is not grid iron, nor is it rugby but back in the day, defence could be quite a bit more robust than it is now. Footie players are not built like the second row and if you happen to apply six studs (cleats I think for the left pondians) at speed to the side of someone's knee then it will not end well.
If you look carefully, you will notice that Maradona doesn't simply whizz around defenders: he completely humiliates our boys by finding space and making the ball go there with him. The bloody thing is attached to his toe when he needs it to be so and then he simply flicks it into the net, almost as an afterthought. He barely looks at it - he know where it is because he has told it to be there.
Genius.
[1]See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braveheart for background.
The big mistakes by the Brits were made beforehand by not taking seriously the noises being made by the junta, when there might have been a chance to contain things.
It’s very sad that what was once a strong relationship between the two nations went downhill with Peron and since then the islands / evil Brits theme gets rolled out to distract from internal issues.
The Argentine people have certainly suffered appallingly under dictators and poor leadership.
And yes, without the sentiment that followed winning back the islands Thatcher and her then future would probably have played out very differently, but don’t doubt that there was very strong support in the UK at large for the recovery of the islands.
According to my family, a bunch of people, probably fisherman or metallurgic workers, raised a flag in one of the island (we don't know why) and then Galtieri sent some troops to protect these people. When the fascists arrived to the islands, they were hostile to the residents. And then hell broke loose, and Galtieri was at war with the UK, US and NATO. A complete lunatic. Once the war started, the propaganda machinery took over. People fighting the dictator didn't want this war, but knew very well it would weaken the Military junta.
> Do you really think Galtieri would have gone for any kind of political settlement
No. The ERP (People's Revolutionary Army) and Montoneros were fighting against Galtieri, in the streets of Buenos Aires, so the Military Junta needed a distraction. However, my mom always said that the only person who could stop that war was Lady Di. She was very popular in Argentina, people used to compare her with Evita. Maybe my mom was wrong, she was a bit of dreamer after all.
> The big mistakes by the Brits were made beforehand by not taking seriously the noises being made by the junta
True. Galtieri never thought England would go to war. I'm not sure why, probably because he had bad intel, or was a complete sociopath.
> It’s very sad that what was once a strong relationship between the two nations went downhill with Peron
Yes, it's sad. After Peron everything went downhill. My mom is an English teacher, and was born in Argentina. She loves the English culture and people (Ladi Di, Churchill, etc), and the war did not change any of that, but deep inside I think she feels betrayed by England (by Tatcher, the media, and even the Queen). But she knows very well what happened and why, and finds comfort in thinking that the war helped restore democracy in her country. She was a proud Montonera https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montoneras
All the best!
> Although the ERP continued for a while under the leadership of Enrique Gorriarán Merlo, by late 1977 the guerrilla threat had been eradicted or gone underground.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montoneros
> The Montoneros were effectively finished off by 1977, although their "Special Forces" did fight on until 1981. The Montoneros tried to disrupt the World Cup Football Tournament being hosted in Argentina in 1978 by launching a number of bomb attacks. In late 1979, the Montoneros launched a "strategic counteroffensive" in Argentina, and the security forces killed more than one hundred of the exiled Montoneros, who had been sent back to Argentina after receiving special forces training in camps in the Middle East.
In Argentina, Maradona was seen as Evita and Che Guevara. The Champion of the poor, and the face of anti-imperialism.
* Right-wing Peronism: Videla, Military junta, AAA.
* Left-wing Peronism: Montoneros, students, socialists.
Up to 30,000 people disappeared, and more than 12,000 were tortured by the right-wing fascists.
I'm pretty sure Leopoldo Galtieri wanted the war more than Thatcher did; he started it, after all.
Also, negotiating with dictators doesn't always end well. Look at what happened in 1939.
100%. The ERP (People's Revolutionary Army) and Montoneros were fighting in the streets of Buenos Aires, so Galtieri and the Military Junta needed a distraction. A big one.
> he started it, after all
This is probably a myth created by the media. A bunch of people, probably fisherman or metallurgic workers raised a flag, and hell broke loose. Things escalated very quickly after that. All we know is that a small group of people raised a flag in one of the island and then Galtieri was at war with the UK, US and NATO. The Military junta killing Argentine people, and going to war with a powerful country, a country that defeated the German Empire. It's crazy! Was the war inevitable? I don't know. Did England over reacted? Who knows. All I know is that Galtieri was a sociopath, and that he died while incarcerated in a Correctional Facility.
> negotiating with dictators doesn't always end well.
This is true, ex: Saddam Hussein, Hitler, etc. But you know what, this was a conflict that could have been resolved by Lady Di in probably 1 day. People in Argentine loved her. She was seen as the Evita of Europe. On the other hand, people in Argentina didn't like Galtieri, and people in England didn't like Tatcher. Unfortunately, no one tried to diffuse the situation in any way. This is sad. Argentina and England were allies from 1810 to 1939, until WWII started and Perón took over https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentina_during_World_War_II The fact that during WWII 4,000 Argentines served with British armed services shows how many British descendants were living in Buenos Aires in the 1900s.
This was lauded as goal of the century.
This goal was the 0x5f3759df of soccer.
As you get to higher and higher levels of football the quality of the defending increases so being able to play against the opposition as if you were eight is very rare.