"Life does not end here," Andrés Escobar Saldarriaga blurted out of his thin lips in front of his relatives in the lobby of the Marriot Hotel in Fullerton hours after scoring against the goal of the Colombian National Team's 2-1 loss to the United States that decreed the elimination of the team from the 1994 World Cup. Days later, he would sign a column in the newspaper El Tiempo with the same title. The elegant 27-year-old left-handed defender sentenced his tragic end with a paradox.
Ten days after the own goal he had scored in the United States, Andrés Escobar's life ended in the parking lot of the El Indio nightclub, on the Las Palmas road, in Medellín. It was six bullets that lodged in the lung, stomach, neck and left forearm that ended his existence, on July 2, 29 years ago.
After the assassination of Andrés Escobar, speculation flourished: that he had been killed by a mafia of gamblers who had lost a lot of money with the elimination of Colombia from the World Cup; that killed him the pressure of narcos and criminals who gave everything for the selection. That his death had nothing to do with football. But in the end, the footballer was killed for scoring a goal against in a country dominated by cartels and a society immersed in the deepest violence.
The Knight of Football
Andrés Escobar at Atlético Nacional.
Andrés Escobar Saldarriaga was born on March 13, 1967 in the bosom of a middle-class family in Medellín, in the Calasanz neighborhood, from where the screams of the Atanasio Girardot stadium are heard. Son of Darío Escobar, a bank employee, and Beatriz Saldarriaga, he was the fifth brother (one woman and three boys) and from a very young age he had as a mirror his brother Santiago, who was a professional footballer in Atlético Nacional.
He attended Calasanz School, where he lost tenth grade for escaping to play soccer. They transferred him to the Conrado González Institute, which had a team and could train at ease. He was skinny and ate poorly, but when he made the decision to dedicate himself to football he changed his diet and underwent a strict gym regimen to gain muscle mass. He reached one meter eighty-five, and weighed 75 kilos. He graduated in two years and went on to play for the Antioquia National Team. By 1988 he was already in the Colombia national team, almost non-stop.
Andrés Escobar after scoring against the goal that eliminated Colombia from the 94 World Cup.
His beginnings in football were as a central midfielder, left-handed, elegant and slender. Carlos Piscis Restrepo, who directed the Antioquia National Team, saw him play and gave him some advice: he suggested playing as a central defender, to take better advantage of his characteristics: good stature, good aerial game and security to play from the bottom. Before turning 18, Francisco Maturana took him to Atlético Nacional and in 1989 he was a starter in the team that won the first Copa Libertadores for Colombia.
With the national team he scored his only goal in the 1-1 draw against England, at Wembley. He played the World Cup in Italy 90, when the coffee team was eliminated in the second round after the fateful error of René Higuita against the Cameroonian Roger Milla and missed playing in the 5-0 of 1993 in the Monumental against Argentina due to a knee injury. For his way of playing and his neat costumes he earned the nickname of Knight of football. During the World Cup in the United States the press indicated that he was one signing to sign for Milan of Arrigo Sacchi to replace Franco Baresi.
Narco-football
Pablo Escobar, capo of the Medellín Cartel. (AP)
In the late 80s and early 90s, drug trafficking dominated the scene in Colombia. The year of Atlético Nacional is also the year of splendor of drug lord Pablo Escobar Gavíria, the Patron. His Medellín Cartel assassinates presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galán in 1989, explodes 100 kilos of dynamite in the newspaper El Espectador and shoots down an Avianca plane with 107 people believing that among them was also candidate César Gaviria. Other politicians, judges, journalists, priests, police officers and trade unionists are murdered.
That year in Medellín there were 4052 homicides, almost double that in 1988. The peak year is 1991: 6349 homicides, 17 per day.
While the war between the Medellín and Cali cartels was settled with blood and fire on the asphalt of the cities, soccer also became a scene of dispute and demonstration of power. Millonarios de Bogotá was under the influence of Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha, El Mexicano, the second in the chain of command behind Pablo Escobar, who had under his control the DIM, but above all Atlético Nacional. While America de Cali was managed by the kingpins of the city's cartel: Miguel and Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela, José Chepe Santacruz Londoño and Hélmer Pacho Herrera.
Soccer was fertile ground for laundering money and the narcos knew how to take advantage of it. Players and coaches were paid figures typical of Europe, figures arrived from abroad, spectators filled stadiums. And hardly anyone asked anything.
The anecdote that is already legend indicates that Pablo Escobar and El Mexicano hired professional soccer players – each on their own – and set up challenges at Hacienda Nápoles, Escobar's immense refuge, and the two narcos could bet two or three million dollars per game. They were flown in, paid obscene amounts in cash and offered all the required amenities. Several of the figures of the Colombian national team passed through there, but not Andrés Escobar. The footballer would have rejected the offers to participate in the meetings at the Hacienda Nápoles.
What happened on July 2, 1994
Humberto Muñoz, material author of the murder of Escobar.
"Many said in the streets that if Pablo Escobar had been alive, nothing would have happened to Andres," the phrase belongs to Mauricio Chicho Serna, glory of Boca and the Colombian national team, who was prosecuted in Morón for alleged money laundering of drug trafficking along with the widow of Escobar Gaviria. El Patrón had been shot three times on a roof in Los Olivos, Medellín, on December 2, 1993. by the Search Bloc created by the Colombian government of César Gaviria.
The match against the United States had been on June 22, Andrés Escobar received his family at the hotel, went shopping and testified before the press. He then started in the 2-0 win over Switzerland, but the coffee team no longer had a chance of reaching the knockout stages. Although the footballer had a trip scheduled for after the World Cup, he decided to return to his country with the entire delegation. "You have to show your face," he had told his father, when he suggested that he keep the plan and take refuge from the siege of the press.
After a few days of deep sadness at his home in Medellín, Andrés Escobar decided to start turning the page. His friend Juan Jairo Galeano convinced him to leave and they went to the disco El Indio. Andrés was with Pamela Cascardo, his partner, a dentist, with whom he was going home in five months. The footballer, his girlfriend, his friend and another woman sat at a table and from another they began to shout: "Autogol, Andrés, autogol". They mocked and laughed at him.
The Knight of football approached the table from where the provocations started and asked for "respect". The brothers Pedro and Santiago Gallón Henao, suspected of links to drug trafficking and paramilitary forces, were there. They had allegedly been men of Pablo Escobar, whom they betrayed shortly before the Bloc executed him after 17 months of intense searching.
The Gallón Henao brothers.
After the altercation, Andrés Escobar decided to leave the place with his companions. In the parking lot, he located his blue Honda, but the Gallón Henao brothers intercepted him with a white Toyota truck and insulted him again. The footballer again asked them for "respect".
According to the account of the prosecutor of the case Jesús Albeiro Yepes, "after arguing with Pedro Gallón, Santiago arrived, the older brother who told him: 'You do not know who you are messing with.' At that moment the driver of the Gallón brothers, Humberto Muñoz, got out of the car in a hurry and while Santiago kept repeating that phrase to Andrés ('You don't know who you're messing with'), he got close to his car and unloaded the revolver. " Desperate, Pamela got behind the wheel and drove to the nearest hospital, but the athlete arrived without vital signs: he had died 25 minutes after receiving the sixth and final impact.
Humberto Muñoz, the driver of the Gallón brothers and material author of the murder of Andrés Escobar, would be arrested in less than 24 hours and sentenced to 43 years in prison, although the sentence was later reduced to 23 years. On 5 October 2005, the author took advantage of an extra-prison benefit that allowed him to leave prison after serving only almost 12 yearsof his sentence. The Gallón brothers, meanwhile, would be sentenced for concealment to 15 months in prison, although they only purged less than three after paying one million Colombian pesos as bail, which allowed them to be released. Six years later, Juan Santiago Gallón would be sentenced to three years and three months in prison, after undergoing an early sentence for the crime of financing paramilitary groups.
During the investigation "there was something particular: several of the drug traffickers of the 12 of the gallows, whose crimes were pardoned in 1993 for their collaboration against the Medellín cartel of Pablo Escobar, ended up testifying in the Prosecutor's Office in favor of the Gallón. I remember that most of them stopped by the office to give their versions. In other words, the Gallón family not only had money, but power and friends in the state," prosecutor Albeiro Yepes told El Espectador on June 21, 2014.
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