Maradona, Hampden ’79 and the £750,000 jersey

Ex-Scotland winger Arthur Graham didn’t cherish significant shirt and sold it for a song

When the Nutmeg team sat down to discuss how we’d go about writing this piece, the first question that was mulled over was the extent to which Diego Maradona’s performance at Hampden against Scotland in 1979 had been gilded over the years by those who witnessed it.

TV cameras were excluded from Hampden following a dispute between the BBC and the Scottish Football Association over broadcast rights and so there is only the attestation of those who were there – not to mention some extremely dodgy video footage – to go on.

The memory plays tricks, and we wondered if with the passage of time some recollections may have exaggerated the feats of Maradona that day. But research soon established the consistency of eyewitness testimony. The little Argentine had indeed put on a display for the ages, a sublime mix of the interplanetary, the divine and the jaw-dropping. Maradona, still stung by his omission from Cesar Luis Menotti’s World Cup-winning squad, announced his arrival on the international stage in devastating fashion.

On-the-whistle match reports all said similar things. “The Kid To Topple Pele,” announced the Daily Mirror before listing names such as Johan Cruyff, George Best, Denis Law and Bobby Charlton, prodigies of their day to whom Maradona was already an equal. The Daily Express wrote that he was “destined to be the greatest Argentine of all time”.

Then comes the detail from those who played. “I don’t like getting beaten,” Paul Hegarty, the Dundee United defender, who was in the Scotland back four that day told The Courier on the anniversary of the 1979 match. “No footballer worth his salt does, but sometimes in a beating you have been privileged to have been part of something else.”

Arthur Graham, the Leeds United winger who scored Scotland’s goal in the 3-1 defeat, put more flesh on the bones.

“He looked like a mascot, just a wee boy,” he told the Daily Mail in 2017. “I kind of acknowledged him as if to say, ‘All the best, son, you’ll need it’ – the size of him. Then he started beating players as if they weren’t there. It was as if the ball was tied to his feet. He made their first two goals and scored the third, we couldn’t get near them because of him.”

John Wark struggles to keep up as Diego Maradona announces his arrival on the world stage in June 1979

The grainy footage, barely a few minutes long, that exists of Maradona’s performance hints at just how good he was. ‘Hints at’, because it’s practically impossible to identify anyone with certainty such is the distortion on the film. His assist for the first goal that day which he laid on for Leopoldo Luque is, nevertheless unmistakeable, and brings to mind some of his best moments at the 1986 World Cup. Scotland defenders stumble and trail in his wake looking every inch the dilettantes that, of course, they were not. Alan Hansen would become a multiple European Cup winner while Hegarty, David Narey and George Burley were no slouches either. Meanwhile, Maradona’s goal is pure impudence, drawing Scotland goalkeeper George Wood off his line, shimmying then tucking the ball in at the near post from a position wide on the right of the 18-yard box, before his trademark leaping celebration is seen for the first time.

Writing in his autobiography, El Diego, his own recollections of the day are fairly scant but he seems to back up what everyone else was thinking: “I scored my first goal in the blue and white of the first team… and I felt I could beat the world.”

Abandoning our attempts at iconoclasm, we realised there was another story to be told. Let’s call it the £750,000 shirt story. Graham, who would go on to play for Manchester United, takes up the thread, explaining how Maradona’s blue-and-white striped jersey had caught his eye.

“Just before the end, I thought I have got to get this guy’s shirt,” he tells Nutmeg. “Everywhere on the pitch that he went, I went as well. Then, when the final whistle blew, I went up to him right away and said, ‘Hey, wee man, swap shirts?’”

There is a picture of Maradona on the Hampden turf wearing Graham’s Scotland jersey and another of him inside the dressing room sat beside Daniel Passarella. Who knows what became of that Scotland shirt, but Graham packed his Argentina one in his kit bag and took it back to Yorkshire with him.

I got a few quid for it. Then it went for stupid money.

“I kept it for a while, actually. I had my own football camps and I used to take my shirts to let the kids see them. I took a Manchester United shirt, a Leeds United shirt and the Maradona shirt. And then for some reason it went into my garage and it was in a right state – this was for a couple of years – and somebody said you might as well try to sell that, because it was in a right mess. It needed a good clean up, stitches here and there and I never bothered with it. I got a few quid for it then. Then it went for stupid money. I missed out with that.”

When it was sold by Christie’s in 2004, the lot essay read:

The above shirt was worn by Maradona in the Scotland v Argentina international match, played on the 2nd June 1979 at Hampden Park, Glasgow. Argentina defeated Scotland 3-1, with Maradona scoring his first-ever senior-level international goal. The match was also Maradona’s one-and-only international appearance in Scotland. The shirt was gained by Arthur Graham as a swap with Maradona after the match.

The jersey fetched £9,500.

Two years ago, the shirt that Maradona was wearing when he scored his Hand of God goal against England at the 1986 World Cup was sold at auction by Steve Hodge – doing his best Arthur Graham impersonation by making a beeline for the little man at the final whistle – for the staggering sum of £7.1million. The value reflected the rise in demand for match-worn jerseys, the infamy of the moment but also the cult-like interest in anything related to Maradona, especially in the aftermath of his death in 2020.

James Bruce, sporting specialist at McTears Auctioneers Glasgow, who sold a collection of Bertie Auld’s Celtic shirts last year, says the jersey which Graham swapped would fetch considerably more today given its backstory.

“A lot of valuations are hypothetical on the basis that these items are very unique. In recent years, the value of match-worn shirts has shot up,” says Bruce. “Maradona’s Hand of God shirt sold for £7.1m but, by comparison, the most anyone had previously paid for a shirt was Pele’s 1970 World Cup shirt which went for £157,000 in 2002.

“When we sold Bertie Auld’s collection, it was mostly his European swap shirts, not his main Lisbon one. These were shirts from the failed European run and other games such as those against Fiorentina, Dukla Prague, AC Milan, Inter and Feyenoord. The Dukla Prague shirt was the big surprise, it sold for £12,000.”

A determined Arthur Graham would acquire Maradona’s jersey at full-time, but fail to realise its true value

As we’re speaking, Bruce taps at his computer and finds the information he’s looking for; it’s the value of the last Maradona jersey to sell at auction.

“It was a Napoli shirt from the 1984-85 season. Napoli finished eighth in the league, we don’t know what game it was worn in – and it fetched £20,000. The appeal of Maradona is limitless and you just don’t know what would happen in an auction.”

Bruce estimates that Maradona’s Hampden shirt would sell for at least five times that amount.

“The auction house’s purpose is to drum up interest using provenance and backstory to explain why this item is important. The shirt that you are talking about would, at a comfortable estimate, be between £100,000 and £150,000... with the right marketing and given the importance of it, given the stature of the player, given the significance of the match in terms of it being his first goal for Argentina and this is where it all started for him in the international sphere, it could go for even more.

“That valuation is not based on research but off-the-top-of-the-head comparisons and if you have two people who are determined to get the shirt, you never really know until the hammer comes down; it could go for four or five times that amount.”

And what’s 5 x £150,000? Yep, that’s right…