A Bristol outsourced marketing agency is over the moon after landing a heaven-sent PR opportunity from one of its clients – the auction of the notorious ‘hand-of-God’ ball from the 1986 England v Argentina World Cup quarter final.
Yours Sincerely handles PR for Graham Budd Auctions, which is selling the ball on behalf of the match’s Tunisian referee Ali Bin Nasser. 
The match in the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City has gone down in football history for Argentine Diego Maradona’s first goal in the 2:1 victory when he punched the ball past England keeper Peter Shilton, both pictured at the kick off – and later claimed it had been “a little with the head of Maradona and a little with the hand of God”.
Ali Bin Nasser did not see the deceit and awarded the goal – much to the anger of England fans ever since.
Maradona, who died in 2020, went on to score an incredible second goal in the game with the ball – which has become known as the ‘goal of the century’ – before Gary Lineker scored for a deflated England side in the 81st minute.
The referee kept the ball, pictured below, at the end of the game.
Within a few hours of Yours Sincerely sending out its press release on the sale it had achieved more than 750 pieces of coverage.
The Sun has used it as the lead story on its front page today under the headline ‘Underhand of God’, while it also appears on page three of the Daily Mail and in every other newspaper and major news website.
It was also used on BBC Radio news bulletins throughout Thursday.
London-based Graham Budd Auctions, which specialises in sports memorabilia, has put as estimate of between £2.5m and £3m on what it calls an iconic piece of football history.
Yours Sincerely’s press release calls it the ‘World’s most controversial football’. The release carries quotes from auctioneer and sorting memorabilia expert Graham Budd and Ali Bin Nasser. 
The agency also carried out an interview with the referee through an interpreter and attached it as a Q&A to the release. Quotes from the interview were carried by many of the newspapers covering the story. It also offered journalists their own follow-up interviews with the retired referee auctioneer and Mr Budd.
Next month Yours Sincerely is helping Graham Budd Auctions hosting an event at Wembley Stadium where the ball will be on display.
The event will be attended by England players from the game including Terry Butcher, Peter Reid and Kenny Sansom along with Ali Bin Nasser.
Yours Sincerely works with clients across the UK and internationally on marketing strategies, PR and digital marketing campaigns.
The agency was launched in 2019 by Amy Simpson, who worked in PR for clients including Microsoft, American Express and Virgin, and commercial, digital, communications and PR strategist Dominic Baliszewski.
