Watch Vipstream. In Homer's Odyssey, the Phaeacian princess Nausicaa and her friends are the first figures in world literature to play with a ball. According to one version, the Goddess Athena altered the course of the ball to guide Nausicaa onto Odysseus. After 3217 years, Diego Armando Maradona declared that the same thing happened to him, in the goal that went down in history as "The hand of God".