22 June 1986, Estadio de Azteca in Mexico City hosted what has become one of the most important games in the history of football. Seminal Argentine player Villa Fiorito’s most famous son, Diego Armando Maradona together with his comrades faced the England team in the frame of the men’s FIFA World Cup Quarter finals. During the second half and within a time interval of four minutes, El Diego, as he was reverently called, crafted the two goals that led to victory: the first was the controversial La Mano de Dios (‘the hand of God’), regarded by some as a handball foul, followed by the so-called Goal of The Century, which British commentator Barry Davies so skillfully described in real time for the BBC: ‘... there goes Maradona again… Oh you have to say that’s magnificent, there is no debate about that goal, that was just pure football genius… and the crowd in the Azteca stadium stand to him… and the coolness under pressure to play the ball home with the side of his foot… if the first was illegal, the second is one of the best goals we’ve seen in this championship… sheer skill…’ 

Situating writers and football connoisseurs Musa Okwonga and Marcela Mora y Araujo in the context of all that has transpired since that four-minute interval thirty-eight years ago, this Kongossa is an invitation to reflect on the politics and creativity that football games enact in various geographies. La Mano de Dios made it onto numerous international newspapers, but its reverberations were also felt strongly on the streets of Argentina, with Maradona portraying the ‘illegal’ goal as an act of revenge for the injustice faced by the country during the 1982 undeclared Falklands War with the UK.

Football matches have long been a space for playing not only the game itself but also serve as an expanded pitch for political manoeuvers, racial and gender discrimination, manifestations of power, class struggles as well as various other forms of oppression experienced by players, nations, fans and others involved in these competitions worldwide. As a format that follows the trajectories of information that travels via rumour, this Kongossa is an occasion to unpack the many threads Ballet of the Masses encompasses—from the beauty of the game to its impossibilities and failures, which are always at play in geopolitical discourses, exchanges, and strategies.

This event takes place in the frame of On Football and the Theatre of Collective Body Making.