Scheduled for June 6 in Paris, Diego Armando Maradona's heirs (deceased in 2020) have turned to French justice to halt the auction of the Golden Ball he won as the best player in the 1986 Mexico World Cup, considering it a stolen object.

"Diego Maradona's heirs have instructed me to recover the Golden Ball stolen from his father in Naples in 1989. They have asked me to take legal action so that the ball is not auctioned on June 6," said lawyer Gilles Moreu, without giving further details.

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The award was missing for three decades until it was inadvertently bought by a modest collector in 2016 for a paltry sum.

According to some reports, the "Adidas Golden Ball" that distinguished him as the best player of the 1986 World Cup was stolen in 1989 from a safe deposit box in a Naples bank, where Maradona kept the ball, in an action allegedly orchestrated by the Neapolitan mafia.

The item is set to be auctioned on June 6 at Aguttes (Nueilly-sur-Seine) for a potentially record-breaking price, surpassing the $9.2 million for which Sotheby's sold Maradona's legendary jersey worn against England in the 1986 World Cup.

Aguttes, for its part, clarified in a statement that it "conducted all necessary searches and verifications according to available databases, contacting French and Italian authorities," and to date, "there is no element that questions" the seller.

The fortunate collector, Franco-Algerian Abdelhamid B., acquired Maradona's Golden Ball in 2016, along with other awards stacked in a box, in exchange for a few hundred euros at the Parisian auction house Drouot Nord, where unsold items end up.

According to Aguttes, Abdelhamid B. demonstrated to have acted in "good faith", so, after three years without a claim from Maradona's heirs, the item legally belongs to this small collector.