June 22, 1994. A total of 93,689 fans were watching Colombia take on World Cup hosts the USA in their second group game of the tournament, packed inside the enormous Rose Bowl in LA. Unbeaten in a qualifying campaign that culminated in a stunning 5-0 win over Argentina in Buenos Aires, Colombia had their fans dreaming of becoming world champions, but a 3-1 defeat to Romania had already badly dented hopes of reaching the second phase. The pressure was on.
Colombia began well enough, Carlos Valderrama dictating play as Faustino Asprilla and Freddy Rincon searched for the goals to get them back in contention. Then, with 35 minutes gone, the USA’s John Harkes crossed towards striker Ernie Stewart. Attempting to cut out the danger, 26-year-old centre-half Andres Escobar only managed to direct the ball past the stunned Oscar Cordoba for a demoralising own goal.
Early in the second half, Stewart added another, and although Adolfo Valencia bagged a consolation in the last minute, the Americans won 2-1. Four days later, Colombia overcame Switzerland 2-0, but it was too little, too late. Their World Cup hopes were over.
AN ILL-FATED HOT DOG
Fearful of a hostile reception at home, many of the players stayed in the USA for a holiday, but though his family tried to convince him to take some time out in Las Vegas or at Disneyland, Escobar insisted on joining manager Francisco Maturana and his assistant Hernan Dario Gomez on the flight back to Bogota, so that he could face the Colombian public.
Things got worse during a press conference at the capital’s El Dorado airport. As the media took their places like vultures around a fresh carcass, Gomez leant across and whispered to Maturana: “Look around this room, soon I will take some of these sons of bitches.” What Gomez hadn’t realised was that his microphone was already on. The entire Colombian press heard his comments, and in the following day’s papers they got their revenge, mercilessly lambasting the coach and his team.
Seven days after the lowest moment of his footballing career, Escobar arrived in Medellin, trying his best to look to the future. He wanted to set a date for his marriage to fiancee Pamela, and then there was the small matter of signing a contract with Italian giants Milan, who’d been impressed by his stylish displays for Colombia and Atletico Nacional.
“When we heard Andres had been killed, everyone kept silent for the whole morning”
On the evening of Friday, July 1, he dropped in at his friend Juan Galeano’s house and convinced him to go out for the night. Pamela wanted to rest, so Escobar and Galeano met at the Palmitas restaurant before moving to the Padua disco, where they drank the popular Colombian firewater aguardiente with two other friends, Eduardo Rojo and his wife.
The night passed quietly until, around midnight, a group of men began to ridicule Escobar. “You scored a beautiful own goal,” shouted one, and the others began to chant: “Own goal, own goal!” Another asked: “How much did they pay you to score?” Escobar reacted half-heartedly to the provocations thrown his way.
At 1.30am, Rojo and his wife left the disco, but Escobar and Galeano stayed, eventually paying their bill at around 3am. Although they’d been drinking, each went to look for his car, so they could drive downtown to get a hot dog.
On the way to his grey Honda Civic on the far side of the car park, Escobar bumped into the same group that had provoked him earlier, among them the notorious Gallon brothers, known to local police as Medellin mafiosi.
Again the shouting went on and on: “Own goal, own goal, own goal!” This time Escobar reacted, swearing at his tormentors and refusing to move his car to enable the brothers to reach their Toyota Land Cruiser.
Some members of the group tried to calm him down – “It’s OK, you’re a good guy, let’s go home now” – but Escobar refused to leave. Finally, he reached his car and got into the driver’s seat.
Having lost their opener, Escobar’s own goal against the USA left Colombia in a perilous spot; his death was a shock to the football world; Humberto Munoz Castro was sentenced to decades in prison; crowds line the streets for the funeral approached.
“Perhaps you don’t know who you’re dealing with,” he said. His brother, Juan Santiago, was quick to offer his thoughts. “Do not look for trouble with my brother, dumbo, son of a bitch,” he said. The row awakened the brothers’ bodyguard, Humberto Munoz Castro. Believing his bosses were in trouble,
Castro got out of the Land Cruiser and approached the car. He bent his head to the side window, yelled, pulled out his gun and shot Escobar six times at point-blank range. One of the bullets penetrated the footballer’s heart. In the immediate aftermath, two theories were investigated by police.
First, that the shooting was attributed to gamblers incensed that Escobar’s own goal had cost them huge sums of money backing Colombia.
Second, that it was merely one of the many ‘daily incidents’ in crime-ridden Medellin (that same night, another 36 murders took place in the city). The first theory spread like wildfire across the world, but the second seemed the most likely. There was no serious evidence to suggest a hit. In 1994, there were an estimated 3,000 sicarios in the country – men who’d kill on request, in the way others deliver pizzas.
“After his death, I quit professional football for five years. I couldn’t take the hypocrisy”
For the Gallon brothers, it would have been easy to hire a sicario to complete the job on a stolen motorbike and to avoid any connection to the incident. Nevertheless, as Escobar’s body was taken to the Coliseo Ivan de Bedout indoor arena for thousands to pay their respects, the players and coaches of the Colombian national team were given round-the-clock protection by the police.
They were also banned from attending Escobar’s funeral for fear of any further outbreaks of violence directed towards them. A crowd of more than 120,000 people accompanied Escobar’s coffin to the Campos de Paz cemetery. A year later, Castro was sentenced to 43 years and three months in prison for manslaughter. The Gallon brothers were both jailed for 15 months for incitement.
From his cell in Itagui prison, Castro still maintained that he didn’t know who he was shooting.
“THE BEST DEFENDER WE’VE HAD”
Nearly a decade later, FFT were in Colombia, when a chant went around Atanasio Girardot stadium during the city’s derby between Independiente Medellin and Atletico Nacional.
“Andres Escobar, you went away but keep alive in my heart,” they sang. Between the tropical music rhythms and harsh football yells, the chanting of Escobar’s name sounded something like a church mass. Away to the left, in the stand behind the goal, a banner was unfurled, reading: “Andres Escobar is still alive.”
Around the stadium, Escobar’s face was just as ubiquitous as it was in 1994, when he was still pulling on the Atletico Nacional shirt. His eyes stared out from the photos printed on green Nacional kits, while street vendors sold badges, CDs and sunhats with his portrait on. Nacional fan Elisa Tamayo wore a badge of Escobar on her green top every time she went to a match. She was only seven years old when he died. “I was having breakfast with my parents and my little sister when we heard on the radio that Andres had been killed,” she told FFT. “Everyone kept silent for the whole morning. Then, in the evening, my father agreed that I could join him to pay tribute to Escobar at the Coliseo Ivan de Bedout. The mourning crowds made a deep impression on me. I still get goosepimples when we chant his name before matches.”
It was in Medellin, the city where he was born, that Escobar made his name. Between 1987 and 1994 – except for a short stay with Swiss side Young Boys – he patrolled at the heart of Nacional’s defence, one of the key players in a side still remembered as the most successful in Colombian history. In 1989, Nacional won the Copa Libertadores, becoming the first club from the northern Andes countries (Colombia, Venezuela, Peru and Ecuador) to become champions of South America. By the fateful summer of 1994, Escobar, together with Asprilla and Valderrama, was the backbone of the national team.
As a player, Escobar’s nickname was ‘Calidad (Quality) Escobar’ because of his fairness and sportsmanship. “Andres was a very intelligent player with a good overview of the pitch,” explained Victor Marulanda, once Escobar’s defensive partner at Nacional. “He showed that a Colombian player can be intelligent instead of a dumbo. “For us, he was irreplaceable. For five years, we played without a number two because nobody wanted to play in his shirt. It was not until Ivan Cordoba was playing exceptionally well that we asked him to wear it.”
Years after his death, the club and the city council erected a sculpture of Escobar near the stadium. A few hours after Nacional’s 2-1 win against Independiente, the club’s new assistant coach led a training session for those who didn’t play.
The assistant was Santiago Escobar, the older brother of Andres. He promised to speak to FFT after training, but as soon as the session finished, he skipped the usual shower, jumped in his car and drove away. Lina Gomez, who lived in Calasanz in southern Medellin, where the Escobars grew up, understood why he wanted to avoid conversations about his brother. “The family had to face many difficulties after what happened,” she explained to us.
“Even at the cemetery, Andres could not find rest. His grave became a place of pilgrimage for Nacional fans. That’s why they took his relics to the parish church in Calasanz. He has a small block in a wall in the crypt.” Gomez had got to know the Escobars during games in the schoolyard. “Andres was shy and was usually taken in tow by Santiago, who was the first to play for Atletico Nacional,” she said.
“But Andres followed him a few years later. We were so proud of them in Calasanz. When he made it to the first team, I started to attend all of Nacional’s home matches. I just couldn’t believe the news that he had been shot. It only started to become reality when I saw the funeral procession pass through our neighbourhood, and then I became very angry. “The bad guys in Medellin screw up everything for the good people. Why a dedicated, intelligent player like Andres? If Rene Higuita got shot tomorrow, it wouldn’t surprise me, he mixes with the wrong people. But Andres Escobar? Ever since his death, I haven’t gone back to the stadium again. I’m not interested in going any more.”
She showed us a pile of newspaper cuttings. On top was an article headlined ‘Nacional, futbol y Gloria‘, from a special edition of the newspaper El Colombiano covering Nacional’s Copa Libertadores victory. As she placed the other articles onto the kitchen table, they formed a collage of sadness. “Antioquia bursts out crying,” one read, referencing the region around Medellin. “Unforgivable,” said another. “I can’t throw them away, but it will be good if you take them,” she said. “They are of more use to you now.”
“He was the best defender that we ever had,” local Edison Gallego told us. “But they just got him.” “You must be a journalist,” smiled waiter Oscar Salcedo, when we visited the El India restaurant, situated next to the car park where Escobar was shot. “Journalists come from everywhere to visit this place – Japan, the USA, Africa. After the shooting, I put a small memory stone in the car park to give people a place to put flowers. But when they built a petrol station, it was taken away.”
After Escobar was killed, Gonzalo Medina, a professor at the University of Antioquia, had finished a book about football in Medellin.
Swiftly, some said cynically, he changed the title to Una Gambeta a la Muerte (A Challenge of the Death) and dedicated it to Escobar. Medina had a theory as to why Escobar’s killing had such a huge impact on the people of Medellin.
“Escobar was an Antioquian, and a descendant of Spanish immigrants – we Antioquians consider ourselves to be the pioneers of the Colombian nation,” he explained. “The Antioquian is a hard-working entrepreneur and a good Catholic, who wants to achieve something and help his family’s future.
“Andres Escobar was an example of those traditional Antioquian values and virtues. The other famous Escobar, the drugs boss Pablo, symbolised the other Antioquia – people aiming at ruthless self-enrichment and the use of violence to achieve their goals.
“Antioquians are a people of enormous contrasts. Nowhere else across South America will you find as many Catholic priests per inhabitant, but nowhere will you find as many witches either. The killing of Andres showed us more than ever that the Antioquia we love so much consists of two worlds that live with their backs to each other. But the bad world oppresses the good and we were forced to face that.”
BROTHERLY LOVE
“How did you get this number?” asked a surprised Santiago Escobar when FFT called. “OK,” he relented, “come to our hotel on Saturday and we’ll have time for a brief chat.” Two weeks later, we spoke with him at last. “After the death of Andres, I left professional football for more than five years,” he told us. “I couldn’t bear the hypocrisy of it any more, I was angry and disappointed. I just played football with kids. That was my therapy. With my family, I established a football school for children from poor areas in Medellin.
“I named it after Andres and companies from Medellin supported it. But after a little while, the interest of the sponsors faded and we handed the school over to the parish of Santa Domingo. “As the years went by, friends and family kept pushing me to get involved in football again, so in 1999 I became the assistant coach at a Second Division team, and that was where I finally lost my antipathy towards the professional game. Andres was a victim of football, but it was his passion as well. The same applies to me. Now I’m back, I hope to become coach of Atletico Nacional.”
During the 20 years that followed our chat, Santiago would achieve that ambition, having two spells in charge of the team where Andres made his name – guiding them to a pair of Apertura titles in the Colombian league – and also managed 13 more clubs across South America, including Independiente Medellin. When we spoke a decade after his younger brother’s murder, it still hung over Santiago like a dark cloud, but time had provided a silver lining.
“Andres’ death still makes me sad, but I’m proud too,” he said. “Proud, because there are people here in Medellin who didn’t know him when he was alive, but who are still shouting his name in the stadiums and being inspired by the example that he set as a sportsman. Every year on the anniversary of his death, our family get condolences from the whole world. It’s strange – it makes me sad and happy at the same time.”
This feature first appeared in the August 2004 issue of FourFourTwo magazine