Football, as we know, is a magical sport . For football we rejoice and despair, we rejoice and suffer. A goal from one’s favorite or a decisive save by the goalkeeper of the opposing team is enough for the emotions of the fans to explode in one direction or another, always to the extreme, as perhaps does not happen in any other sporting event. But, sometimes, absurd and incomprehensible tragedies happen in football, which remain etched in the soul of the fans like an unwanted guest who doesn’t even think about removing the disturbance .
And the case of this story: the story of a footballer, an excellent footballer, one we would surely have heard a lot about, who would have had a successful career and who, at least in part, had it, before he was cut short. definitely in the most absurd way imaginable. Yes, because the life – and career – of this player ended at just 27 years old outside a nightclub in Medellin on July 2, 1994, broken by the shots exploded by a machine gun. We are talking about Andres Escobar, who would have turned 50 today.
A POTENTIAL CHAMPION
Andres Escobar Saldarriaga was born on 13/03/1967 in Calasanz, a north-western district of the city of Medellin, in the heart of Andean Colombia.
The reality in which Escobar grows up is not an easy one: drug trafficking between the 70s and 80s is a deeply rooted reality with which to live and end up entangled and more than a risk for a young man of those years.
But Andres is different, he graduates and pursues what is his true dream: to become a professional footballer. Since he was a child he distinguished himself as an excellent defender thanks to the elegance and effectiveness of the interventions and these qualities allow him, when he was just twenty, to become the immovable owner and symbol of the main team of his city: the Atletico Nacional of Medellin .
But Escobar is not just a young full-back, rocky and reliable. He is an honest player and man, who plays clean without exceeding the aggressiveness of the interventions. And it is this prerogative that will earn him the nickname of El Caballero del Futbol (The knight of football) .
His performances soon made him receive the attention of the Colombian national team recruiter, Francisco Maturana , who already called him to the national team in 1988, immediately repaid his trust with Escobar’s only international network, moreover in a luxury stage: Wembley stadium , where Colombia face England in a match valid for the Stanley Rous Cup.
Even at the club level, Escobar takes away great satisfaction, with his Nacional who is the protagonist of a triumphal ride in the 1989 Copa Libertadores until the victory on penalties against Olimpia in Asuncion.
And it is thanks to this victory that the Nacional will compete for the Intercontinental Cup against the unbeatable Milan of the Dutch, only being defeated thanks to a pearl by Chicco Evani on a free kick at the last minute of extra time, after a tough and vigorous match. Escobar is the proudest standard bearer of that team and his undoubted talents even bring him, according to the press, into the radar of Milan itself, only to marry the Young Boys .
But the Colombian defender probably doesn’t digest the cold Bernese climate easily. Within a few months, he returned to his native Medellin, definitively consecrating himself as a hero of the fans. With the team of his city, where he will end his short career, he also manages to win the national championship in 1991 .
In those years Escobar was part of perhaps the strongest Colombian selection of all time, a team that counted among its ranks, unmanageable phenomena of the caliber of Valderrama, Higuita and Tino Asprilla , and a mix of players of absolute value such as “El Tren ”Valencia and Leonel Alvarez and young people with excellent prospects such as Harold Lozano, Ivan Valenciano and Faryd Mondragon .
Indeed, in the qualifiers for USA ’94, Maturana’s team managed to win 5-0 in Buenos Aires, thus trimming a historic slap in the face of the most popular Argentine Seleccion.
THE USA ’94 DISASTER
And it is also for this reason that there is great anticipation around Colombia in the starting blocks of USA ’94 . Colombia seems to be ready for a historic World Cup and even the ballot box churns out more than affordable opponents for Los Cafeteros : Romania, Switzerland and the USA.
But the most difficult opponent for that Colombia is … Colombia . The South Americans seem to be on vacation, they don’t play with conviction and are beaten first by Raducioiu and Hagi’s Romania and then by the hosts, before winning in vain with Switzerland.Everyone home .
And it is precisely against the USA that Andres’ tragedy takes place: in the 35th minute the defender, in an attempt to counter a through cross, hits badly in a slide and deposits the ball behind Oscar Cordoba. It is perhaps the most famous frame of those World Cups .
The results of the disastrous stars and stripes campaign are not long in coming: the press is furious and the return home of Maturana and associates is certainly not light. So far everything normal .
But no one, not even in that Colombia out of control and in constant civil war, could think that a football “catastrophe” could turn into a human tragedy like it was.
END OF THE STORY
On July 2, 1994, Andres is trying to forget his sporting disappointments and enjoying the buzzing Medellin evening with his girlfriend. A normal summer evening, or so it seems .
Yes, because there are those who have not forgotten their own goal a week earlier, someone who had bet on the passage of the Cafeteros’ turn: the former security guard Humberto Munoz Castro who, at the exit of a nightclub, approaches the player and explodes six (or twelve according to some) machine gun shots at him. End of the story .
Escobar’s girlfriend will later claim that the killer yelled “Goooool!”, As in the style of South American football news reports. According to other witnesses, the killer instead yells “Thanks for the own goal!” while he fires.
After the tragedy, Escobar’s teammates are subjected to a maximum security regime for fear of further retaliation. The tale of the absurd .
But in this absurd story there is a hope, a happy note. And it is the awareness that Caballero’s fame has stood the test of time and that the memory of him is still alive in the hearts of Colombian fans, who still sing choirs in honor of their idol. But this is not enough to accept that one can die for an own goal.
