Diego Maradona’s Ballon d’Or public sale postponed

Mexico Metropolis. The public sale of Diego Maradona’s Ballon d’Or that was going to happen this week has been postponed, the French public sale home Aguttes reported right this moment, within the midst of a judicial investigation right into a attainable sale of stolen objects.

The heirs of the Argentine ten did not cease the public sale of the trophy he acquired after successful the 1986 World Cup, after having filed a authorized enchantment. A French court docket dominated that the public sale might go forward, however Maradona’s household lawyer appealed.

“Maradona all the time arouses passions, and this continues regardless of the current ruling on Thursday, which we accepted and which rejected the heirs’ request to stop the sale,” Maximilien Aguttes mentioned in an announcement. “Our mission is to arrange the public sale in the absolute best circumstances for each our vendor and the bidders. The litigation atmosphere and this uncertainty don’t enable specialists to face this calmly, and our position as a trusted third get together can now not be adequately fulfilled” he added. A brand new date for the sale was not set.

French justice opened the investigation final month after receiving a grievance about an alleged theft. The Nanterre prosecutor’s workplace indicated that the court docket’s ruling didn’t have an effect on the investigation, which is ongoing.

The Ballon d’Or trophy, for the most effective participant within the World Cup, was lacking for many years amid circumstances which have by no means been clarified, and it not too long ago appeared. Maradona’s household claims that the trophy was stolen and that the present proprietor doesn’t have the facility to promote it. Aguttes indicated that the trophy reappeared in 2016 as a part of lots acquired by a non-public collector in Paris.

The present proprietor and Aguttes guarantee that when the person acquired the trophy — years in the past — he didn’t know that it had been stolen.

Maradona acquired the award at a ceremony on the Lido cabaret on the Champs-Elysées in 1986. He later disappeared, producing all types of rumors.

Some claimed that he misplaced it taking part in poker or that he offered it to pay his money owed, Aguttes mentioned. Others claimed that Maradona stored it safely in a financial institution in Naples and it was stolen by a gang of gangsters from the area in 1989, when he was taking part in within the Italian league. Based on the story instructed by a member who give up the mafia, the trophy was melted down and become gold items. Maradona’s heirs suspect it was stolen from the financial institution.

The Nanterre court docket, on the outskirts of Paris, highlighted that the soccer participant by no means filed a theft grievance when he was alive and that Maradona’s heirs didn’t current any kind of proof to determine {that a} police investigation was carried out when the trophy disappeared.

Maradona, who died in 2020 on the age of 60, acquired the award for his sensible efficiency as captain of Argentina, which lifted the cup by beating West Germany 3-2 within the ultimate on the Azteca stadium in Mexico Metropolis. However first, he scored the controversial “Hand of God” objective and the “Purpose of the Century” within the 2-1 victory over England within the quarterfinals.

Aguttes estimates that the trophy “is value thousands and thousands due to how distinctive it’s.”

Maradona opened the scoring towards England with the so-called “Hand of God”, a objective by which the Argentine star pushed the ball along with his fist in direction of the again of the objective. Maradona was additionally a wizard along with his toes and, 4 minutes later, he began from midfield and dribbled previous the English protection and goalkeeper Peter Shilton to attain the objective that FIFA later declared the most effective in World Cup historical past.