Colombia's Narco-Soccer: Pablo Escobar, Los Pepes, and the Murder of The Gentleman
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June 23, 1994.

Clear skies, 90 degree heat, 93,000 fans at the Rose Bowl Stadium, Pasadena. A cauldron of emotion and excitement. Match day two of the World Cup, soccer's biggest stage, and a clash between the hosts, USA, and star-studded Colombia. Los Cafeteros, the coffee makers. Pre-tournament tips and destroyers of previous finalists Argentina just weeks before.

After years in the sport's shadows, coach Francisco Maturana, a former player, has given the cafeteros flamboyance and flair. Even in the Californian heat, nobody truly expects the Americans to win. But Colombia are on the ropes. They're reeling from defeat to lowly Romania, beset by off-field drama and death threats, kidnappings and attempted hits.

Pablo Escobar is fresh in the ground, but his death has only accelerated an orgy of killing in native Medellín, where for years soccer and narco trafficking have become one. Colombian captain Andres Escobar, the gentleman, is also a son of Medellín. He stars in defense for his best club, Atletico Nacional.

A soft-spoken son of a banker, Andres is almost universally loved. A towering, stoic presence with a mullet and a face chiseled like an Easter Island statue. He and his fiancee, Pamela, are readying for marriage and kids. And Andres has just agreed to join AC Milan, Europe's best team. A few chaotic seconds change everything. It's 34 minutes in.

US winger John Harkes screws a cross into the area. Andres moves, hesitates, and then he lunges full stretch, poking the ball with his right toe right past his own keeper, Oscar Cordoba, himself a replacement for a star who's jailed amid Colombia's drug war. Andres has just scored on his own team, Bedlam. The old stadium creaks and a thousand star-spangled banners wave from its bleachers.

The Americans can't believe it. Cordoba falls backwards like a dying Hollywood star. Escobar lays on his back, head in his hands. You will take them, the exasperated ESPN caller says, any way you can get them. Colombia pick themselves up and carry on, but they're rattled, incoherent. And just minutes after halftime, the Americans score again. Cheers of USA ring out across Pasadena.

And Colombia's World Cup campaign, one Brazilian legend Pele said they'd actually win, is all but over after two games. Not even a win against Switzerland in the next match can save them. And within a week, the Colombians are on the plane home to Bogota. Four days after that, Andres Escobar is dead, gunned down by key players in Colombia's rudderless and ultra-violent drug trade. He's killing shock soccer and Colombia.

Welcome to the Underworld Podcast.

Hi guys and welcome to another episode of the show where we give you some pretty good life hacks on how not to call reception at 3am asking for cool girls and mafia coke. My name is Sean Williams and I'm joined today every day by my co-host Danny Gold. It's cold, wet, windy, horrible in Berlin. Everyone's got Omicron. I think my dad's got Omicron. Anyone, anything you can cheer me up with?

Actually, not really. Oh, you know, they legalized gambling in New York State this year, and there's all these absurd, like all these companies that are doing it, all these absurd buy-in deals. So I've been figuring out ways to capitalize on that without actually being good at gambling, like using multiple sites,

their freebies to bet on opposing sides of the game and just kind of, you know, seeing if I can get myself a little legalized flim flam money. So look into it, kids. Definitely start gambling if you haven't already. I'll let that be a lesson. I mean, I think that's going to dovetail quite nicely with today's episode, actually. I'm just about to head off to Sicily tomorrow. Everyone's got Omicron there too, but they've got sunshine, beaches and good food, which, you know, after being in Germany makes that just about stomachable.

I'm working on Simon doing stuff about the Mafia really interesting piece and the podcast I'm hoping is going to draw people to our podcast which is way better of course and then people can sign up to the Patreon tons of stuff there as always I think we've got Scottish gangsters going up there I'm speaking to a guy who's an expert on North Korean Bureau 39 drug dealers I think I'm going to try and speak to some sort of chief of justice against the Mafia out in Sicily anyway there's tons of stuff

And yeah, I mean, like I'm going to have some stuff from my trip out there soon. I mean, I think you're going to have anything coming up from St. Louis as well.

Yeah, I might do some stuff with people who really know the fentanyl situation well. You know, people have been on the streets there. Also, speaking of Colombian cartels, we interviewed two of the best reporters on them for the Patreon in earlier days, Toby Muse, whose book Kilo is incredible, and Monica Villamizar. Patreon.com slash The International World Podcast, $5 a month, we'll get you a lot more bonus stuff.

For sure. And yeah, I mean, I've been interested in this stuff for a while. I think I've been researching a story about a British club that was stealth taken over by a big drug baron. Still, we had to place that. Thanks industry. But yeah,

Yeah, I remember like, this was like a big, big deal. The death of Andres Escobar and the Colombians in USA 94. It was like the first cup I recall as a kid and it kind of straddled the old and the new worlds in soccer. And I'm going to call it football from now on. So you've had your time with that. And there's like Diana Ross and Ray Houghton and Georgie Hadji and that Bulgarian guy who looked like a wolf. And another one called Yankov and a German called Kunz, which eight-year-old me thought was the funniest thing ever. And I think...

Sadly, 36-year-old me still thinks it's worth a chuckle. I really have no idea what you're talking about, but I hope some of the listeners do. I'm going to teach you some stuff about the beauty of the beautiful game. Anyway, the Colombians, right? These coffee makers.

They like this team is hot, right? Like really, really hot coming into the tournament. They arrive in the US. They've just lost only one of 26 matches before that. And Pele, I mean, he loves a 19, like a weird favorite here and there, but he reckons the Colombians are going to win the whole thing. And it's, it's not even a crazy bet on their way to qualifying Columbia hammer and Argentina side five nil in Buenos Aires. The Colombians play so well.

that the Argentines give them a standing ovation, which, I mean, if you've seen much South American football, that means a lot. Watching on rather than playing is Argentine legend Diego Maradona, possibly the best player ever. And also one of the best cocaine doers ever, too. Oh, yeah. We'll dive a little deeper into Diego's troubled 90s as well. And that's going to get into like gangs, drugs, bent politicians. We'll get there in a little bit.

Yeah, but also, you know, I want to point out to the people, this isn't just an episode about soccer. You know, it's like Friday Night Lights and football, right? It's going to be about cocaine and cartels and all that. So don't get spooked if you don't care about soccer. I'm not going to like do match reports like this is this is more about drugs than anything else. But for ordinary Colombians, right, like coming into this World Cup, they're weary from years of insurgency, drug wars, terrorism, economic woes.

This World Cup in the US is a chance to unite under the flag and pull together for once. Football is, quote, the cultural strength of the country, says, like possibly Colombia's most famous person, the writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

We were always an elegant team, he says. We learned from Brazil and Argentina, but we did not know how to score goals. Now we know. And take it from me, he doesn't know anything about football, so even he's getting excited about this thing. And coach Francisco Maturana, he sits at the top of this renaissance. He's a Medellin man himself. He's played for Atletico Nacional over 350 times.

And he's leading it to it and Colombia's first and only Copa Libertadores victory in 1989. That's Nacional. Though, as we'll hear soon, that historic moment also has a massive narco shadow looming over it. Maturana is the guy who gave Andres Escobar his Nacional debut in 1987. And he wants USA 94 to change the world's perception of his beloved home country. Quote,

I remember when we went to Europe in 1988 and even at the 1990 World Cup in Italy, most of the time during press conferences, we'd have to talk about Pablo Escobar. The attacks, drug trafficking, no one asked about football. So they're very much like our listenership, I imagine. So there's Pablo, right? The other Escobar.

There's actually a documentary about this called The Two Escobars and the guys who made it, the Zimbalist Brothers. They're the ones I worked for when I was putting together that doc about who shot Jam Master Jay and the other one about Bob Marley's attempted assassination. So I don't know if you watched that for this, but it's a pretty good doc. It's awesome. Yeah, I've put a link on the reading list as well. So yeah, I recommend people watch that. I mean...

Everyone listening to our show already probably knows a ton about Colombia's most infamous son. So I'm not going to go into much detail about Pablo, but they might not know about the kingpin's love of football, which he grows up with between Medellin's top two tier clubs.

Nacional and Independiente. Nice. You got it. Did I get it? I feel like I screwed that up. Two top tier. Two top tier. Yeah, you got it. Two top tier. All right. Christ, making my own tongue twisters. In 1991, facing arrest and extradition to the US, Pablo bargains with the Colombian government to take him in and let him serve time at a massive special built prison called La Catedral on the hills overlooking Medellin.

According to Escobar's son Juan Pablo in his biography, My Father, quote, he invested a fortune in it, installing a drainage system to make sure the playing field wouldn't get soggy and lights so powerful they were visible from a large part of Medellin. Although I guess like any light is visible. Once the field is constructed, Pablo invites a constellation of stars to play against him and his henchmen. And of course, for his amusement.

Pablo always plays as a striker. That's the most glamorous position on the pitch. Goalkeeper René El Loco Higuita plays there. So does hard man midfielder Lionel Alvarez and explosive striker Faustino Asprilla. Even Materana comes to La Catedral a couple of times.

Alvarez in particular is this real scrapper, defensive midfielder, goatee, flowing black hair. And he's a draftee, right? From Independiente to Nacional. Says Juan Pablo again, quote, At one of those matches, I noticed that Lionel Alvarez was playing really aggressively against my father. He was being tougher on them than anybody else. But my father wasn't reacting.

Alvarez was obviously a very brave player until Crud, Crud? I don't know. That's one of Pablo Sicario's, by the way, pulled him aside on the field and told him, ease up on the boss. The man never says anything, but he's already glaring at you.

Bro, I mean, you got to respect that dude who's playing as Pablo and just still going hard. I mean, that's a competitor right there. Yeah, I mean, I've got a lot of respect for the guy that like two foot tackles Pablo Escobar. I mean, that is probably enough for me to pull out of the next challenge against him. And Alvarez wisely does just that. Matches at La Catedral and they end only once Pablo's team win. And he'll cheerfully steal players from the opposition until he does.

There's a referee dressed all in black, Juan Pablo says, but that doesn't change the objective. Quote, the length of the game depended simply on whether my father's team was winning. So he's basically like a five-year-old, you know? Yeah. He's probably playing Monopoly in jail, and when he starts losing, he just flips the board. Just a straight-up board flipper, you know? Yeah, he flips the board, then he, like, gets someone to murder everyone in the room. Yeah.

Pablo piles cash into Nacional and even Independiente as part of a rivalry with the Cali cartel, whose leading Rodriguez brothers runs its top side, America de Cali. Pablo's name is never on the director's office door at Nacional, but few think he isn't pulling strings everywhere and laundering vast sums, of course, through the club.

When Esprit, the striker, is offered a lucrative deal to sign for Italian side Parma in 1992, Escobar must allegedly rubber stamp the move. Here's a 1994 Esquire article. Quote, For four successive years until 1993, Medellin and Cali battled each other for the national championship.

The stakes were high. There were rumours that referees were routinely intimidated and bribed, sometimes receiving as much as $180,000 to influence the outcome of a game. In 1989, a linesman was murdered after he disallowed a goal in what was a scoreless tie involving teams representing Medellin and Cali. The murder was tied to a $750,000 bet that was placed on the game in Medellin.

In February 1993, the body of René Higuita's teammate Omar Dario Cáñaz, a promising striker, was found bound and shot at close range. Police believe Cáñaz was the victim of Los Pepes. I mean, I didn't realize they actually had gone after players before the Escobar situation. Like that's pretty, I thought there was like a, like, you know, kind of like a code that they wouldn't go after players, but that's pretty dark. Yeah.

Yeah, and there's more stuff to come as well. First, let's get into the Pepes, right? I think a lot of people probably know who they are, but it's short for Perseguidos por Pablos Escobar, or People Persecuted by Pablo Escobar.

It's an amalgamation of ex-narcos, far-left, far-right paramilitaries who are basically out to get Pablo with backing from the Cali cartel and even, at times, the CIA. Many of its men have been given a join us or die ultimatum and they carry that brutal motto into a drug war that's dropping thousands of Colombians each year, including politicians, cops and judges.

Again, I think Toby Muse's book, Kilo, gets into a little bit of this. And we actually talked about the right-wing death squads, I think, that come out of that as well, a lot in our episode on Colombia's most, I think, deadliest, or whatever we called it, our most dangerous narco who was just captured, Otoniel. Yeah, yeah. We'll kind of, you know, we'll breeze past them. But, I mean, it says Maturana of the time, that's the coach, right, of Nacional. Yeah.

Quote, the introduction of drug money into soccer allowed us to bring in great foreign players. It also kept our best players from leaving. Our level of play took off. People saw our situation and said Pablo was involved, but they couldn't prove it. On May 10, 1989, Atletico Nacional meet Danubio of Uruguay in the semi-final of the Copa Libertadores at South America's Champions League.

No Colombian side has ever won the prestigious tournament, but with an all-Colombian side peppered with stars like Higuita, Álvarez, Luis Perea and Andrés Escobar, Nacional have squeezed through a group with compatriots Millonarios and two Ecuadorian teams. And then they beat Argentina's Racine and Millonarios another time to make the semi-final.

The Nubio, they're a solid team, but they're unspectacular. The first leg in Montevideo ends in a 0-0 draw. A week later, Argentine match officials, that is, the referee and his two linesmen, they arrive in Medellin ahead of the second leg. Things begin to go wrong as early as the drive from the airport. Says referee Carlos Esposito, quote,

We were going down the Montagnita road when they told us, here they killed a referee, here they shot a linesman. After a long wait, we went to the hotel.

Not really subtle. Subtlety has never been a narco strong point. It's not really a tactic that they employ. No, and they're going to get a lot less subtle, actually. When Esposito calls down to reception for a bottle of water, four men turn up, one with a machine gun. That's not very subtle. There you go, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Linesman Abel Nieko has a 9mm pistol held to his head. Esposito continues, quote,

And behind came the famous Popeye, well-dressed, suit, tie. He had a briefcase. He opened it up and said, here's 250 grand. Take it with you. Don't worry, you're going to leave Colombia without any problems. We replied that we'd gone to work accordingly. He closed the briefcase and told us, your life here is worth nothing. And in Buenos Aires, it can cost us $1,000 for each one. And there they went.

We should explain that, that Popeye, I think was, he was Escobar's most famous hit man or most prolific. One of the, one of the two. Yeah. He's like a very well-known Sicario. Yeah. Yeah. His name's, uh, John Jairo Velasquez Vasquez, uh, nickname Popeye. And I think he was sent down in the end for like 300 murders. Yeah. Something insane like that. Pretty insane. But he did get out. Uh, and then he kind of posed on social media with guns and then got sent. Right. That's a, yeah. Another don't Instagram me crimes. Well,

Wasn't he doing like some sort of, I don't know, underworld Columbia tour? Or is that like Escobar's brother or something? Yeah. Wasn't there like a big piece by John Lee Anderson about that years ago? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, this guy is a bit of a bad bitch. And so now it's the night before the match in Medellin, right? The trio, that's the referee and his two linesmen.

They think of making a run for the airport, but the hotel, it's surrounded. The next day, minders drop the official's car 300 metres from the stadium, and they're surrounded. Esposito again, quote, the Medellin police chief arrived, and I explained to him that as soon as the game was over, we had to get to the airport. He explained to me that if Nacional won, it would be difficult because of the party. I think that's supposed to be some kind of veiled threat, but...

Anyway, there's no real need for any worries on the referee's part because Nacional do win 6-0. People die as guns are fired into the Medellin sky. On the way to the airport, the officials meet the president of Danubio. Quote, he asked me if we had a bad time, says Esposito. They knew everything. The same thing had happened to them.

On May 31st, 1989, Atletico Nacional beat Paraguayan champions Olympia in Bogota, cancelling out a 2-0 loss in Asunción the week before. And then they beat the Paraguayans on penalties. Nacional have made history. Even their shadow owner, ordinarily poker-faced, he hits the roof. Pablo was a block of ice, says hitman Popeye. But he adds, that night in Bogota, quote, Pablo jumped and screamed with every goal.

The players are invited back to Escobar's ranch to celebrate, but the well wishes don't last. That October 1989, Pablo orders the death of Alvaro Ortega, a referee from Barranquilla in Colombia, who he thinks has called a game between America de Cali and Independiente badly.

Narcos are betting massive sums on these games, says Popeye quote. On that day, I was next to the boss at America de Cali, Medellin with the referee's hand. Pablo was very offended and ordered Choco, that's one of his hitmen, to look for Ortega to kill him. At 10.30pm after a following match in Medellin, Ortega is standing outside his hotel when a gunman shoots him nine times, killing him on the spot.

It makes global headlines. The 1990 World Cup in Italy is just around the corner and the Italian Football Association calls for Colombia to be banned.

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It also wants to withdraw AC Milan from the Intercontinental Cup against Atletico Nacional in Japan that winter. That is, the cup between the winners of the Champions League in Europe and the Libertadores. Yeah, I mean, the corruption is usually pretty A-OK, I feel like, in international football. It's just the murder is not so much. It's just that, like, mid-90s in Colombia is insane. Like...

Anyway, none of these threats from the international bodies come to fruition. Coach Maturana, who's by now moonlighting for the national team as a coach while still national coach, he leads Colombia to Italy and they disappoint. They get a draw against West Germany and that's the only flicker in a failed tournament. Colombia are a reactive team, too reticent and afraid to play silky South American football.

Maturana wants to change that. He wants to make the team something the country can truly be proud of in the next World Cup in 1994. And he's got the team for it.

Their star turn is Carlos Valderrama, a blonde Afro attacking midfielder who's played in France and Spain and won South American Player of the Year twice. Yeah, I remember that guy. That guy ruled. Yeah, I mean, he barely fit on a Panini sticker. And then there's Aspriya, who I mentioned before, and he's been banging in goals for fun for Parma, and he's soon going to sign a big money deal for Newcastle United in England.

Freddy Rincon is a kinetic forward at Brazilian side Palmeiras. And then there's Andres, the stalwart. Well-spoken, middle class, runs scholarships for disadvantaged kids. He had a short failed stint in Switzerland, but he's soon to join Milan, the European champions, the gentlemen. We are all working for a common cause to make our country proud, he says, ahead of the cup. I find motivation in the good things to come.

says newspaper el colombiano quote at the slightest offense against the rival he didn't hesitate to apologize he was a great friend an excellent companion friendly with people and above all with children ads friend journalist and diplomat cesar maresio velasquez quote escobar saw soccer as a school of life to teach values and tolerance to learn to win to lose

to embrace sport as a sanctuary of unity. Andres always stayed true to that belief. I mean, are you getting the message? People love this guy. Yeah, he seems nice. I like him. Yeah, he's a cool guy. He's a cool guy. Writes Barry Glendening in The Guardian, quote,

The Colombians coach, Francisco Matarana, insisted his players express themselves and their natural flamboyance yielded rich on-field dividends, courtesy of splendidly gifted individuals such as Valderrama, Rincon, Alexis Garcia and Faustino Asprilla, to name just a quartet from a squad that, at the time, remained largely unknown outside of South America.

Jesus Christ, calm down, Barry. Like, why do English journalists write like this? I mean, there's nothing we like more than waxing Liverpool about fucking football.

This talented team, it reaches its summit on the evening of September 5th, 1993. Buenos Aires' Estadio Monumental, I've been there, it's an insane place, literally rocks when the crowd go wild. Diego Maradona, the Argentine talisman, he's gone on TV before the match to taunt his regional rivals. You can't change history, he says. Argentina up, Colombia down.

Colombia don't just beat Argentina that night. They demolish them. Rincon and Esprit score a pair each. Argentine sports magazines call the night Begurenza, the shame. Even Maradona applauds the Colombians for minutes after the final whistle blows. And for Maradona, this is a watershed moment. For years, he's been wrapped up in a very different kind of mob, the Camorra in Naples.

In 1984, he moved from Barcelona to Napoli, a surprise move given the Neapolitans club standing compared to the Catalunians. Wait, what is that? What does that mean? I mean, Barcelona are one of the biggest clubs in the world and they always have been. And Napoli at the time, they're like from a poor city overrun by the mafia. They weren't really challenging for much. So it was a bit of a surprise move for him to sort of take a step down.

And that's also given Diego's taste, right, in bling and sex workers. In a city ruled by the mafia, it was a perfect fit. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Not the mafia, right? It's the Camorra. I think we use mafia as like a catch-all. Dude, this is an organized crime show. I mean, this is like grounds for firing. Okay, okay. The Camorra.

This could like totally be another episode, by the way, Maradona. And if you haven't already, you should definitely watch the HBO doco from a couple of years ago about Maradona in Naples. Anyway, at the same time that Columbia's players are struggling to get themselves away from the drug trade, Diego is knee deep in it. He's hanging out with Mafiosi. He's drinking, taking drugs. He's fathering up to six different kids with as many women. Some of whom have procured for him by the mob.

At one moment, he's up at 3.40am in a hotel, addicted to cocaine, and he calls a Camorra associate to order up two sex workers to his room, as you do. Midway through the call, one of the women insists that Diego speak to her son, a massive Napoli fan. Says the doco's director, Assis Capadia, quote, If you put that in an episode of The Sopranos, you'd think it was funny. But you'd think, that would never happen. But it did. That was how Diego's life was.

This slow, painful decline of Maradona is happening at exactly the same time as Colombia's stars are in their ascendancy. After the 5-0 loss, Maradona claws his way back into the Argentine squad for USA 94, but he'll be sent home in disgrace, having failed a drugs test.

Two years after the World Cup in 1996, Maradona's close friend and manager, Guillermo Coppola, is arrested when cops find 500 grams of coke in a vase in his Buenos Aires apartment. Says an opposition politician to the New York Times, quote, You can't imagine Pablo Escobar leaving 500 grams of cocaine inside a flower base in his apartment for the police to find. It's like a bad third-rate narco movie.

And from what we know of Maradona, they could probably get off on a, you know, for personal use situation there instead of intent to distribute. And I was thinking about the cop who has the balls to go into Pablo Escobar's home and smash up the vase as well. And if you, I mean, like we've done loads of stuff about sports and organized crime already, right? There's Danny's episode on the NHL and the Russian mob. And I've done an interview with James Montague on the Patreon where we talk about Buenos Aires, drug kingpin ultras, the Balkan mafia. There's all that stuff. And it's well worth checking out.

Anyway, slight diversion, but Maradona in Italy is a fascinating subject. So back to Colombia now. Spirits are high after this Argentine drubbing, and people across the world are just starting to wonder if Colombia might just lift the trophy the following summer. But, like coffee that is by then only Colombia's second most lucrative export, trouble is brewing.

I just, I can't with you. Oh, come on. Come on. That was my daily mailman. Amid the 5-0 celebrations, dozens are killed and many more wounded, highlighting just how febrile the situation is across the country. What is febrile? This is a crime podcast, bro. This is not the Paris Review. Pop like a human being. It's just, you know, tenterhooks. Is that a thing? I don't know. Like, just really fucking tense. Things are really fucking tense all over Colombia.

In 1993, Medellin's murder rate is staggering. Over 5,000 people are killed in the city of 1.6 million that year, including Pablo, of course, which puts the rate at 309 per 100,000 people. I mean, the closest anything comes today, as far as I could find, is Los Cabos, Mexico and Caracas, Venezuela, and they're three times lower. In 1993, in Medellin,

in Medellin, you're about as likely to be murdered as you are robbed. I think Acapulco was up around 100 when it was number one for a couple years. And then El Salvador had a year. El Salvador, the country, had a year when it was like 105, 107, something like that. But 309 is insane.

Yeah, isn't that place in Honduras as well? That's like San something. San Pedro Sula. Yeah, it's been up there as well, but not for a couple of years. Yeah. Anyway, in December that year, the Pepes and the CIA finally corner Pablo Escobar in Medellin and kill him.

Thousands attend his funeral, thanks to his having cultivated this Robin Hood persona, building for the poor and literally murdering the rich and powerful. Viva Pablo, scream some. Others can only think of their own drug war casualties and quietly celebrate his death. With its biggest kingpin gone, things don't get better. Medellin killings continue and it becomes totally normal for kids to walk past bullet-ridden bodies on their way to school.

Some Pepes go on to form the Alto de Defensa Zunidas de Colombia, the AUC, which is a far-right paramilitary group that fights the cartels and the FARC, that's Marxist-Leninist guerrillas that were founded in the 60s. And they're also deep in the drug trade themselves because, of course, they are. All this madness is filtering into the Colombian national team squad too. René Higuita, El Loco, the keeper who led Nacional to its 1989 Libertadores win?

He is a cult hero worldwide for his mad scorpion kick. I've actually put a link here, so you can look at this. Yeah, it's wild. I mean, it seems kind of risky, though. Like, what's the point? Just because it looks really cool? Yeah, I feel like when that happened, because that was in London, right? And when that happened, I feel like the whistle had already blown because it was a bit of a cheap shot, but...

He does that a lot, apparently. I was reading this really cool Esquire piece that I've put on the reading list, and he's known for this in South America. So it's pretty ballsy.

Anyway, Higuita, I mean, he could also be a completely separate pod. He's not just axed from the squad before USA 94. He's in jail. In 1993, Pablo Escobar kidnaps the daughter of drug rival Carlos Molina Yepes, who turns to, who else, a local, Higuita, and gives him 300 grand in a suitcase to be exchanged for the girl. And that's hardly an offer you're going to turn down, right?

Higuita calls this go-betweening, quote, a mission from God, and that angers the state, which then charges the goalkeeper with being accessory to the crime.

Wait, what? I'm unclear. Does he give him $300,000 in the suitcase to be given to Escobar? Or is he getting paid $300,000 to get the girl back? He's given the $300,000 to give to Escobar to get the girl back for the other drug lord. But I guess at the time, the state is just completely powerless to go after the actual narcos. So...

He's like a sitting duck. Yeah, but he's not the bad guy here. No, he's doing God's work, yeah. Yeah. He's a cool guy. I mean, he does the school thing. He shouldn't be in jail. What the hell, man? Yeah, yeah. But Higuita spends seven months in jail just as his teammates are qualifying for World Cup USA 94.

And as the squad's being picked, having somebody so wrapped up in the exact drug war the Colombian government wants to shield from the world is too much. So he doesn't make the final cut for the tournament itself.

If Higuita is called to the team, Miguel Silva Pinzon, the chief of staff to President Cesar Gaviria Trujillo, tells an Esquire reporter, quote, it will be considered a narco team. The American press will seize upon it and they would have a lot to go on. And I'm concerned not only about international cosmetics, it would be very bad internally. Higuita crossed the line and became an apologist for Escobar.

I'm still kind of missing that, right? Because it doesn't sound like he's an apologist. It just sounds like, I mean, he seems like he's helping out the other narco who got his daughter kidnapped, right? Yeah, I mean, I think he had a bit of a scarlet letter slapped on him because he'd done a bunch of these games at La Catedral as well before. So he was kind of known for, you know, hanging around El Patron. Narco associations, yeah. Yeah, so, you know, once he's got a big suitcase with a shitload of cash in it, that's breaking the camel's back.

And this is not the only trouble, right? There are rumors of a rift between the aging Valderrama and Esprit. Writes Henry Mance in 442, quote, what the players but not the media could see was that the key figures were not at their peak. The aging Carlos Valderrama was recovering from injury.

The ever-erratic Tino Asprilla was exhausted after a long season at Parma, and Freddy Rincon, then of Palmeiras, was out of form. Other players had their own problems. Two days before the US game, right-back Chonto Herrera found out his brother had died in a car crash. I mean, none of these are good omens ahead of a desperately contested World Cup. And right off the bat, it begins to go very, very wrong for the Colombians.

In the first game, played in the heat of the Rose Bowl, they go down 3-1 to Romania, half of whose team nobody's even heard of, but whose top player, Giorgi Hagi, is considered one of the best in the world, one of few to play for Barcelona and Real Madrid. He loves replacement goalkeeper Cordoba for the game's second goal, so maybe a scorpion kick would have been worth it. And suddenly, all the exuberance has been sucked right out of the Colombian team.

Perhaps even they know what's coming. Gamblers and narcos have put millions on this game, and they're out of pocket. Somebody hacks the team hotel's televisions, and players or coaches return to death threats flickering on their room sets. This is scary shit, says one of them, quote, Many gamblers lost big money, and there appeared a sort of dark hand that was very upset with the team's performance.

I mean, that's not a particularly dark hand that's just telling them they're going to be fucking shot. And one of the threats says the entire squad will be murdered if Gabriel Gomez Barabas, the central midfield team out of Escobar at Nacional, that's Andres Escobar, plays the next game against the hosts, USA. Says coach Francisco Matarana later, quote, I couldn't put another's life in danger. Barabas was a key player, but they had me beat.

I pulled Barabas. We all called home. There were riots, complete chaos. And that is how we entered the pitch. It's just, it's nuts, man. I mean, Narcos just in fact, like every segment of society, they're really just like a plague. It is. It is. It's like that CJNG one. So dark. It's fucking horrible. Yeah. If Columbia lose their second game against the USA, qualification from their group will be out of their hands.

But the US are minnows, right? I mean, despite home advantage, they've got players playing their trade in like lower leagues in England. And the low standard major league soccer, it's not really cutting it. I mean, surely they're not going to pull it off. For half an hour, the Colombians are all over the Americans like cheap suits, but they've lost their edge. They just can't put the ball in the net.

And then John Hark's ball comes in, Escobar slides, and it's 1-0 to the home team. Disaster. Minutes later, it's 2-0. Despite a late consolation, the USA win 2-1. It's absolute mayhem in the stadiums. The Americans can't believe it. Nobody can. Says Escobar's 9-year-old nephew to his mother, Escobar's sister, quote, Mummy, they're going to kill Andres.

No, sweetheart, she replies. People aren't killed for mistakes. Everyone in Colombia loves Andres. On the field, no one's blaming him either. They do love him, but they are worried. I saw Andres' face and felt deep pain. It was like a premonition, says midfield teammate Alexis Garcia. The following match, Colombia defeat Switzerland 2-0, but Romania beat the Americans, and that means that Colombia are out of the tournament.

Around the footballing world, there is shock. One loss in 26 and now two losses in three matches and it's an early ticket to Bogota. Our team could not fulfill its expectations, Andres tells the media. He writes a chillingly foreboding message in Bogota newspaper El Tiempo after the team elimination. Quote, life does not end here. We have to go on.

Life cannot end here. No matter how difficult, we must stand back up. We only have two options. Either allow anger to paralyze us and the violence continues, or we overcome and try our best to help others. It's our choice. Let us please maintain respect. My warmest regards to everyone. It's been a most amazing and rare experience. We'll see each other again soon because life does not end here.

God, that's dark, man. It's so dark, man. It's so dark. Escobar's actually got relatives in the US and they plead with him to set out the result in chaos with them.

but he ignores them. Andres and his team return home on June 28. Coaches and loved ones beg him to stay home, but on July 2nd, he heads out for dinner at the El Indio restaurant in Medellin's Villa de los Palmas, having a few drinks and chatting with relatives. Says Andres' fiancée Pamela, quote, he forgot his worries. There were warnings, but Andres was young and alive. He wanted to live his life.

Had I known, I'd have kept him at home that night. A few diners begin insulting Andres, but the gentleman doesn't snap back. Later in the parking lot, though, the abuse doesn't stop. Four men pursue Escobar. One of them calls him a faggot. Should we say that? Should we say that word? I think it's okay. Yeah, all right. I think it's okay. I'll say it again. Yeah. One of them calls him a faggot. Escobar drives across the lot to try settling things down. He tells them the own goal was a, quote, honest mistake.

One of the men pulls a gun and he fires it six times, getting Escobar in the back as he sat at his car's wheel. Some say the gunman shout, goal, goal, on every shot. There he dies. 30 minutes later, despite an ambulance being called to the scene, 10 days after the own goal in Pasadena, Andres Escobar, age 27, is dead.

Despite the terror, two witnesses give cops the license plate of one of the vehicles the killers used that night. It's registered to a pair of brothers, Pedro and Juan Gayon, former members of Pablo Escobar's cartel who'd recently left to join Los Pepes. They're riding high after Pablo's death, so high, in fact, that it seems they're above the law.

It doesn't take cops long to capture the culprit, as the Gaon's brother's driver, Humberto Munoz Castro, who drives himself to forge an alibi by falsifying the armed theft of his truck at that time. But even this whole thing might be a red herring.

According to Popeye, who died in 2020 having admitted to over 300 murders, Munoz Castro is just the fall guy. After the murder, the Gajons allegedly paid Pepe's leader Carlos Castaño $3 million to bribe the prosecutor and get him to focus solely on Munoz Castro and forget the Gajons were even there.

For his part, Munoz Castro claims he never even knew who he shot that night at the El Indio restaurant. He's jailed for 43 years, but he gets out after just 11. The Gaeons are never convicted. Years later, prosecutor Jesus Albaido Yepes admits the brothers should have at least been tried as accomplices.

What's more, the accepted story is that the murder was premeditated. Revenge for the Gaon's huge gambling losses after Escobar's own goal.

According to the hitman Vasquez, Popeye, the reason is way more mundane and way more evil. Quote, Andres' mistake was talking back to those guys. The Gaon's egos were so inflated after taking down Pablo Escobar, they weren't going to allow someone to talk back. Not even Andres. It had nothing to do with betting. It was a fight. That's all.

Isn't that like a, I think the two Escobars goes into that, right? Yeah, it does. Yeah. That's a little bit from that. Um, it's, it really is a great film. I, it's all over the world. I think it got syndicated on all kinds of channels. It's really cool.

Andres Escobar's death elicits a crazy outpouring of emotion across Colombia. In Medellin, over 100,000 people filed past his casket, draped in Atletico Nacional's green and white standard, in a local basketball stadium. Justicia! Justicia! cried the crowds.

Colombian President Cesar Gavrila, a man equally praised for his fight against the cartels and criticised for giving free licence to the murderous Autodefensas, he decries the, quote, absurd violence of Colombia's ongoing drug war. Francisco Matarana, the team coach, later says that Escobar was killed not by sport. Quote, Andres was a soccer player killed by society.

But Colombia's narco football doesn't end there. As the Cali cartel rises to become the country's biggest trafficking group in the 90s, its own control of America to Cali becomes ever more controversial.

When America's star player, Anthony de Abila, scores the goal that qualifies Colombia for the 1998 World Cup, he dedicates it to, quote, those who've been deprived of their liberty, especially Miguel and Gilberto Rodriguez, the leaders of the cartel.

Even when the Cali cartel is broken up, US Treasury officials still think America is funded by drug money and adds the club to its 1996 kimping list, a title it shakes off only in 2013. Now, the Rodriguez brothers pour an eye-watering amount of cash into America in a 20-year period and make it one of South America's best clubs.

America win Colombia's league title eight times during this period, but it never wins the big prize, the Libertadores, just like Nacional. According to Colombia reports, quote, the designation, that's the kingpin list, meant that American companies were no longer allowed to do business with America de Cali. Its assets were frozen and visas were revoked. The club was not even allowed to keep prize money for international tournaments. In effect, America became toxic.

Sponsors stayed away and left the club only with the revenue of ticket sales to survive and the selling of some of their best players. The consequences were disastrous. Despite the huge pool of local talent, America slowly sank into oblivion and in 2011 were relegated to the second league.

And this happens all over the continent as well. Over in Mexico, Tirso Martinez Sanchez, a.k.a. El Futbolista, he laundered millions of dollars through payer transfers, in addition to sending over 70 tons of cocaine across the border. And we've already spoken to James Montague about Buenos Aires' notorious Baras Barbas. Lionel Messi's dad, that's like one of the biggest stars in the world,

His dad has been accused of laundering drug money through football initiatives, and in 2009, Spanish cops arrested 11 people from using ties in the sport to ship cocaine from Argentina to Europe.

And it's not even confined to South America. I mean, Europe's top sides aren't much better, I must say. Like being run by Middle Eastern dictators and Russian oligarchs and corrupt Asian politicians. Newcastle United, for example, that's the team Tino Esprit achieves cult status out after 1994. Just last year, they were bought by an investment vehicle, the Saudi regime, which is bombing Yemen into the dirt and doing all sorts of crazy stuff. So, yeah.

You can't really claim the higher ground if you're in Europe about this stuff. And match fixing, that goes on everywhere too. And Danny's into it, I think, as far as I understand. In an African Nations Cup a few weeks ago, one of the referees made a string of weird decisions and then he ended the game before the 90 minutes was up, which was pretty nuts. Less than a month ago, authorities leapt into action after over half a million dollars was bet on a single yellow card for Granit Xhaka against Leeds United for Arsenal in the Premier League.

And I mean, this doesn't even get to FIFA, bribery, the Qatar World Cup that's going to be played later this year, FBI stings, football leaks. It's opening up all kinds of grimy wounds at the top of the game. Professional football is an absolute swamp. And by the way, you know who lifted the lid on all the FIFA corruption back in 2010? British spy Christopher Steele. And that's the same guy who supposedly had Trump's pee tape. Crazy.

I don't think he had it. I think he, uh, he was the one who brought its existence into like the public consciousness. Ah, so he didn't actually get it himself. He just like sort of blew the whistle. No, no one got it. It hasn't been, um, no, no one's fucking seen that. Yeah. Yeah. If you do, if you do it, wait, wait, hold on. If you do have it, give it to me and Sean.

Yeah, we could actually make some money that way. Yeah, we should do that. But nothing has quite reached in all of soccer the lows of Colombia's narco football era and the death of Andres Escobar, the gentleman and his absolute prime captain of the nation, cut down over a gambling dispute or even nothing at all.

Just another statistic in Colombia's blood-soaked 90s and a hangover from the death of his drug lord namesake that still rocks Colombia today.

Wow. Well done, man. That was, that was great for sure. Uh, thanks everyone for tuning in. I actually, I actually want to thank a couple people. You know, when I went down to St. Louis, I posted about it and a couple of listeners from the show hit me up and like tried to help me out with some stuff. And, uh, I really appreciate it. There's a couple of them. They know who they are. Uh, so thank you for that. I also want to thank the top tier handlers,

Patreon folks, Noah Brandon, John Simon, Patrick Rowland, Tanner McCleave, Sam Ranzi, Juan Ponce, P. Thomas, Mike Ulrich, William Wintercross, Trey Nance, Matthew Cutler, Ross Clark, Jeremy Rich, and Doug Prindiville. Thanks so much, guys, for your support. Yeah, I think that does it, yeah? I think it does, yeah. All right, to wrap until next week.