Bosses at the National Football Museum in Manchester, where the jersey of Argentina's most famous number 10 from his most talked-about game currently resides, say the item is one of their most popular.

The story of Hodge acquiring the shirt has resurfaced following the death of Argentina great Maradona at the age of 60 on Wednesday.

The midfielder swapped shirts after the 'Hand of God' World Cup quarter-final in Mexico City 34 years ago.

In the aftermath of the controversial 2-1 defeat, it was a sore point and roommate Peter Reid admits he told Hodge "to go away - in Anglo-Saxon".

The shirt was loaned to the museum for exhibitions in 2003 by Hodge, who admitted the shirt did not go down well among the England squad at the time.

Maradona, famously, had pushed the ball into the net to open the scoring and then rubbed salt into the wounds by adding a dazzling solo second soon after.

"To have a Diego Maradona shirt on display would be amazing in itself but to have 'the' shirt, the one he wore on June 22, 1986 and scored those two goals, for us, is absolutely phenomenal," Dickie Felton, spokesperson for the National Football Museum, said.

"We were very lucky and fortunate in that Steve Hodge loaned us this remarkable piece of football history. So many thousands of visitors have seen it over the years. It is an astonishing artefact.

"It almost has a certain power to it, still."

With the passing of time, even the infuriated Reid changed his perspective.

"Who's the fool?" said Reid on BBC Breakfast. "I think it's worth a right few quid now!"

The exact value, though, must remain a matter for conjecture.

Felton said: "We would never put a monetary figure on objects and items but the cultural value of this is absolutely immense."

Australian Associated Press