No Way To
Die
A Colombian player was slain because of a mistake he made
in a loss to the
U.S.
by Jack
McCallum
Issue date: July 11,
1994
When 24 national soccer teams began World Cup play in the
U.S. on June 17, it was difficult for most Americans to
comprehend the frenzied passions unlocked in other cultures
by this, the most-watched sporting event on the planet.
Sadly, we are now a
little closer to comprehending. Andrés Escobar, a defender for
the Colombian national team, died in a hail of gunfire in
his homeland last Saturday, apparently because of a goal he
had inadvertently kicked in for the U.S. in its surprising
2-1 win over
Colombia on June 22 in Pasadena, Calif., which helped bring
about Colombia's unexpected early elimination from the
Cup.
Escobar's death showed how seriously the rest of the world takes the sport.
(Shaun Botteril/Allsport)
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A bachelor whose pleasant manner and good looks had earned
him spots in TV commercials in Colombia, Escobar, 27, had
spent Friday evening dancing and talking to friends at El
Indio, a bar on the outskirts of Medellín. When he left at
about 3:30 a.m.
he was accosted by three men and a woman. They insulted him
about the play in which he redirected a U.S. pass into his
own net—an own-goal in soccer terminology—and he shouted
back. Suddenly, according to an eyewitness, one of the
assailants shouted,
''Thanks for the own-goal,
hijueputa [son of a whore]!'' Then one of the men whipped out a
handgun and began firing, and Escobar fell, groaning and
clutching his chest after being struck by six bullets. He
was taken to a hospital but was pronounced dead on arrival.
As of Monday, Humberto
Muñoz, a chauffeur, had been arrested and had confessed to
the murder. His boss, Santiago Gallón Henao, had also
reportedly been arrested, and two more people were being
sought.
Before the grisly crime, which cast a pall over a country
desperately trying to change its murderous image, threats
had been directed against the Colombian team. On the day of
the game against the U.S., a menacing message had been
transmitted to the
computer screen at the reception desk of the hotel in
Fullerton, Calif., where the Colombian players were
staying. The message targeted head coach Francisco
Maturana, assistant coach Hernán Darío Gómez and Gómez's
brother, defenseman Gabriel Gómez, who had
played in a 3-1 loss to Romania in Colombia's opening World
Cup game on June 18. ''If you play Gómez against the USA,
we will set off bombs against your families in Medellín,''
read the message. The threat was taken seriously, and Gómez
did not
play.
Although Escobar's slaying could have been the work of
dementedly rabid fans, Colombia's notorious cocaine cartels
inevitably came under suspicion. After the loss to the
U.S., a Colombian TV network aired an audiotape of a man
who promised the revival
of the old Medellín cartel terrorist campaign against various
public figures, among them the soccer players. ''Wait for
the surprise we've got for those gutless cowards,'' the man
said.
But that isn't to say that all drug lords were necessarily
displeased by Colombia's disappointing showing. The day
before Escobar was killed, a columnist for the Bogotá
newspaper El Espectador reported that Colombia's star
forward, Faustino Asprilla,
had suggested that gamblers from one cartel or another may
have persuaded some of Colombia's players, with money or
otherwise, to do less than their best in the World Cup. The
implication was that at least one group of drug
traffickers had bet heavily
against
Colombia.
Consider, then, the pressure that Colombia's players may
have been under: win and face the wrath of some cocaine
kingpins; lose and face the wrath of other drug lords or of
fans whose very essence seems tied to the performance of
the national team. One
can imagine the trepidation with which the players must have
stepped off the plane in Bogotá on June 29, having failed
to advance beyond the first round even though the team was
one of the tournament
favorites.
The killing of Escobar has occurred at a time when
Americans are preoccupied with their own visions of
violence and death in the O.J. Simpson murder case. But
nothing in the American experience is comparable to the
emotional investment that people in
Colombia and other countries make in their fútbol heroes.
Regional loyalties dominate American sports, and even
during the Olympics U.S. fans usually root more for
individuals than for national teams. American fans
routinely heap abuse upon their home lads
when they fail to live up to expectations, and at least two
recent World Series goats, grounder- booting Boston Red Sox
first baseman Bill Buckner in 1986 and home-run- yielding
Philadelphia Phillie reliever Mitch Williams in 1993, were
subjected to
threats. But acts of violence against members of the home team
in the U.S. are virtually unheard
of.
By contrast, largely because of the influence of drug
kingpins like the infamous Pablo Escobar (no relation to
Andrés), who controlled the Nacional club team in Medellín
before he was shot to death by government forces last
December, assassination,
abduction and intimidation have long been a part of Colombian
soccer. In October 1983 justice minister Rodrigo Lara
Bonilla inveighed against the infiltration of
narco-trafficking into Colombian soccer. Seven months later
Bonilla was assassinated for his
antidrug stance, and other horrific incidents followed. Eight
sports officials, including the coach of the national youth
team, were assassinated in 1986. The secretary of the
Metropolitan Soccer League was murdered in July 1988. And
in the most notorious
incident before the Escobar shooting, Colombian referee
Alvaro Ortega was shot and killed in November 1989 after he
made a controversial call that enabled América of Cali to
tie Independiente of
Medellín.
During the World Cup, Andrés Escobar wrote a column for the
Bogotá daily El Tiempo. Eerily, his last column, written
four days before his death, ended with this entreaty:
''Please, let's not let the defeat affect our respect for
the sport and the team.
See you later, because life goes on.'' The murderers who
snuffed out his life had other
ideas.
The two Escobars of Colombian soccer shared nothing except
a last name, yet it's a sad irony that they will be forever
linked in death. When Andrés was buried on Sunday in
Medellín, his coffin was draped with the green and white
banner of his club team,
Nacional. Pablo, too, was buried with a Nacional banner,
seven months earlier. One Escobar stood for soccer, the
other for death, but in Colombia they now, more than ever,
are tragically
connected.
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