Now it’s official, the heirs of Diego Armando Maradona they want stop the auction of one of the trophies awarded to the great champion after the 1986 World Cup won by Argentina, the golden ball. An heirloom that disappeared for decades and recently resurfaced. Gilles Moreu, a lawyer at Paradox Lawyers, has announced that he will submit an urgent request to the president of the Nanterre court, near Paris, to have the World Cup Golden Ball withdrawn from auction next month in the French capital.
The lawyer will also request the judicial seizure of the trophy and will file a complaint for theft and concealment. The Aguttes auction house said the trophy reappeared in 2016 among other lots purchased from a private collection in Paris.
Maradona died in 2020 at the age of 60. He captained Argentina in their 3-2 win over West Germany in the 1986 final in Mexico City. The Pipe de Oro received that award in 1986 during a ceremony at the Lido cabaret on the Champs-Élysées. Maradona’s heirs claim that the trophy was stolen and argue that the current owner cannot have the right to sell it, as claimed. His Neapolitan son Diego Junior, on the day he received news of the auction, declared to the Corriere: ««Dad was constantly asking us about that ball, he would have liked to have it. If it has been found, it is his, therefore we are the heirs”, and announced a legal battle. «Our lawyers are alerted, honestly we also have doubts that it is the real one, at the moment we are waiting for the outcome of our checks and then we block the auction».
The trophy was stolen on October 26, 1989 by eight members of Giuseppe Misso’s clan, it was a sensational coup: that night, eight men of the clan, hegemonic in the Sanità district and specialized in billion-dollar robberies, entered the vault of the B agency of the Banca della Provincia di Napoli which was in via Manna, and stole around 420 million and 400 boxes. In one, there was the World Champion trophy.
After seven years of research, contacts with sports objects experts and several attempts to contact Maradona directly, the gallery owner decided to turn to the “Aguttes” auction house. A 3D expertise confirmed that the found trophy is the same Ballon d’Or lifted by Maradona in Paris in 1986. It must be said that Maradona never won the Ballon d’Or as the best player in the world (the award at the time did not consider non-European players) but he still received two: in 1995 the honorary one from France Football for his career and in 1986 for being chosen as the best player of the World Cup in Mexico. Pibe cared about the latter in a special way, and this will be the thesis that his sons will carry forward: «That golden ball is our property».
