Andrés Escobar: A matter of life and death

There’s an often repeated quote by the legendary Liverpool football manager Bill Shankly about what the sport means to those who follow it:

"Some people believe football is a matter of life and death. I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that."

Shankly may have had his tongue in his cheek when he said those words, but as the scenes from Brazilian games at this World Cup have shown a country apparently in the grip of a collective fever that sometimes seems as traumatic as it is celebratory, it may appear that some of the fans of Brazil have taken Shankly’s maxim to heart. 

If they have, their opponents in Friday’s quarterfinal, Colombia, might ask them to consider another quote to put fan hysteria into perspective:

"This sport illustrates the close relationship between life and the game. In football, unlike bullfighting, there is no death. In football no one dies; no one gets killed. It’s more about the fun of it, about enjoying."

This sanguine take on the fortunes of the game was once offered by Colombian national team defender Andrés Escobar, speaking to Colombian journalist Gonzalo Medina about his love for the sport.

Sadly, it’s a quote that took on a tragic irony when Escobar was gunned down in his home town of Medellín, Colombia, on July 2, 1994. Days earlier he had scored an own goal that helped eliminate his team at the World Cup, and in the conflicting reports out of the turbulent Medellín region of that time — where football and violent drug cartels were intersecting facets of day to day life — one of the persistent claims in the wake of his murder was that his mistake had cost him his life.

Escobar was one of the most feted of a golden generation of players representing Colombia at the 1994 World Cup in the USA. The team had dominated their South American qualifying group with an exhilarating brand of attacking football, capped with an unprecedented 5-0 rout of 1990 World Cup finalists Argentina in Buenos Aires. And Escobar was one of their finest defenders — he had helped his side qualify for the 1990 World Cup after a 30-year absence, and after the 1994 World Cup he was due to sign with Italian giants AC Milan, as the long-term replacement for their veteran leader Franco Baresi. At the time of the World Cup in 1994 he was also due to marry his girlfriend, Pamela Cascardo, whose picture he carried in a Bible on road trips.

The sense of expectation and pressure on the Colombian team coming into the 1994 tournament was huge. With the tournament on American soil, the South American teams were expected to be strong, and despite their relative lack of World Cup pedigree, Colombia was among the favorites. They had one of the world’s finest playmakers in Carlos "El Pibe" Valderrama, an explosive attacker in Faustino Asprilla and of course Escobar. 

Yet the pressure was not purely sporting — the rise of Colombian football had been paralleled by, and in part driven by, the rise of the country’s cocaine traffickers. Many domestic clubs had links to the new breed of drug lords, to whom they represented status symbols, and playthings to gamble on, but just as important provided the kind of populist base the drug lords needed to preserve their influence and power in public life. 

The most infamous drug lord of all, Andrés’ namesake Pablo Escobar, was no exception. He was the leader of the dominant Medellín cartel, and is widely believed to have used part of his wealth to bankroll the Atlético Nacional team Andrés Escobar played on to victory in South America’s premier club competition, the Copa Libertadores, in 1989. He also invited national team players, including Andrés Escobar, to come and play games at his fortress-like compound. Whatever misgivings those players had about this arrangement, it was understood that refusal was not an option. And Pablo Escobar certainly used the sport as part of his personal strategy to maintain his hero status with Colombia’s poor — sponsoring children’s teams and building fields throughout Colombia during his time in power.

When he was killed in December 1993, just weeks after Colombia’s footballers had hit the heights against Argentina, a dangerous power vacuum opened up in the country’s drug economy, and rival factions, previously frozen out by Escobar’s influence, began a murderous campaign against his former allies, actual and presumed, under the banner Los Pepes ("Perseguidos por Pablo Escobar" – "People persecuted by Pablo Escobar"). It was against this chaotic domestic backdrop of shootings and bombings that the Colombian team left for the World Cup in May 1994.

Although there was disappointment and alarm when the team lost 3-1 in its opening game to Romania, the team had played well enough to suggest they would put things right in the next game against the USA. The World Cup hosts had put on a well-attended tournament, but were not rated as a competitive force on the field, particularly when stacked against the talented Colombians. 

Trying to settle their nerves with an early goal at Pasadena’s Rose Bowl, Colombia attacked early and often, but could not make a breakthrough against an organized and stubborn USA team. Then with 35 minutes gone, Escobar stretched to intercept a rare USA cross from John Harkes, and succeeded only in diverting the ball past his own stranded goalkeeper. Escobar looked distraught. His nephew Felipe, watching with his mother, Escobar’s sister, turned to her in fear and exclaimed, "They are going to kill Andrés."

Colombia redoubled their attacks, but it was the USA who would score next to confirm a stunning 2-0 victory. Colombia was out of the World Cup before they had even played their final game. 

As the stunned players returned to Colombia, Escobar refused to hide — canceling a planned family holiday in the USA to return to Medellín. In the early hours of the morning on July 2, at a bar in the city, he found himself in a verbal confrontation with a group of people who taunted him about his mistake, while he tried to reason with them and demand respect. The conversation grew more heated until Humberto Muñoz Castro, the bodyguard of two local brothers, José Santiago Gallón and Pedro David Gallón, fired six shots into Escobar as he sat in his car outside the bar.

As news of the tragedy spread, so did the lurid allegations about the circumstances — shaming Colombia. It was claimed Escobar had been killed for money lost on a bet by drug lords. The Gallóns were ostensibly coffee growers and sports apparel dealers, but were known locally as drug traffickers, which further fueled the speculation, especially when they were released after only a few days, amid reports of witness intimidation. While the more sensational reports gained traction, what is perhaps most likely and no less tragic is that rather than a targeted assassination, Escobar was another victim of the culture of lawlessness of the time, whose highly public mistake and refusal to hide from it had made him visible and vulnerable.

Twenty years on and Escobar has become an icon of sorts, inspiring a documentary or two. Shocked by his death, a German Ph.D. candidate named Jürgen Griesbeck was inspired to found an organization called streetfootballworld, which advocates and organizes for social change through the sport in over 80 countries. It is organizing a Twitter campaign this week to honor the anniversary of Escobar's death, around the hashtags #AndresEscobar and #football2me, asking fans to describe their own love of the sport. The organization is also putting on an exhibition and event in Rio inspired by Escobar’s life and words.

And on Friday, a new generation of Colombian players, who have lit up this year’s tournament, will take on Brazil in the World Cup quarterfinals — the furthest a Colombian team has ever got in the competition. It is another anniversary — 20 years to the day since Brazil played the USA, rather than another team of talented Colombians, in the second round of World Cup ’94. Whatever the result, the story of Andrés Escobar shows Bill Shankly was wrong.