“PABLO Escobar would kill anyone to win a football game!” deadpanned Fernando Rodríguez Mondragón, the son of Colombia’s Cali Cartel narcotraficante (drug lord), Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela.
“Mummy, they are going to kill Andrés!” exasperated Columbia’s men’s football team libero, Andrés Escobar’s nine-year-old nephew upon watching him divert a ball into his own goal during a USA ’94 FIFA World Cup game, on a television set back in Columbia.
The namesakes are in no way related – except for football and patriotism!
‘Narco-fútbol’ (Narcoball) occurred between 1979 and 1995 when the Cali and Medellín cartels became involved in Colombian football. Their rivalry began in 1979 when the Rodríguez Orejuela brothers, Gilberto and Miguel, invested in the Santiago de Cali soccer club, América de Cali, with the club becoming league champions in that year – and a narcotraficante named Pablo Escobar shortly thereafter deciding to bankroll the Medellín-based club, Atlético Nacional, which would win the Colombian league championship in 1981!
The period would unfold brutally between Valle del Cauca in Cali and the Aburrá Valley in Medellín.
That would spark a series of titanic battles among the rival cartels’ clubs – which also included Millonarios and Deportivo Independiente – on football pitches, before spilling out in drug-related war across Colombia!
The deadly epoch would end in 1995 with the brothers’ arrest by the Colombian police assisted by the US’ Drug Enforcement Agency and the CIA – with Escobar already having been killed in a joint Colombia-US operation on December 2, 1993.
Challenged with laundering money from his narcotics enterprise, Escobar hit upon the masterstroke of taking control of Atlético Nacional and its stadium finances, in addition to a stake in rival club, Deportivo Independiente – as a stratagem for washing dirty cocaine cash!
Pablo Escobar had one obsession. Not drugs, not money, not power . . . el fútbol! Just as he had built hundreds of football pitches for the barrios’ (informal settlements) young boys (some of who would later become part of his army of sicarios [hitmen] and end up dying for him) – he would, akin to a Roman Emperor proclaiming bread and circuses, bring glory to Atlético Nacional!
In 1982, while Escobar was campaigning for election to the country’s Congress – a strategy conjured to make him immune from extradition to the US – América de Cali would win that year’s league championship, followed by others in 1983, 1984, 1985 and 1986!
It was in 1982 too that Colombia’s main export commodity, coffee became supplanted by cocaine and FIFA rescinded the country’s hosting rights for the 1986 World Cup after successive governments had failed to deliver stadia and infrastructure for the tournament.
On April 30, 1984 Colombia’s Minister of Justice, Rodrigo Bonilla was assassinated in Bogotá by a 16- year-old sicario, allegedly on Escobar’s orders, after he had called Escobar a criminal, whilst proclaiming “the mafia has taken over Colombian football”, and causing the revoking of his immunity from prosecution – resulting in Escobar momentarily fleeing the country and returning to summon a summit of Colombian cartels and club honchos at which he proposed the suspension of the league in order to force the government to rescind extradition!
Spurred by fear of extradition to Los Estados Unidos, the narcos heard Escobar aver: “I would rather have a grave in Colombia than a jail cell in the United States!” With the top clubs inextricably entwined with cartel money, the league went on strike for a week. The strike failing to force the political agenda, the Medellín Cartel embarked on a murder spree targeting judges, policemen and journalists who snooped too far into the link between the narcos and their football teams!
1987’s recruitment of ‘Pacho’ Maturana as Atlético Nacional’s manager by Escobar would culminate in the club – composed mostly of recruits who have grown up on Pablo’s pitches in Medellín’s slums – realizing an unprecedented achievement, come 1989.
On January 13, 1988, a car bomb explosion targeted at the Escobars residential block killed three people, with an entire window frame exploding onto the cot where Pablo’s three-year-old daughter, Manuela lay sleeping – triggering an all-out war between the rival cartels pending which Time magazine would declare Medellín the most dangerous city (with over 4 000 murders every year around this period) which has ever existed!
On May 31, 1989, Atlético Nacional became the first Colombian club ever to win the Copa Libertadores when it triumphed over Paraguay’s Olimpia in Bogotá, with Escobar in attendance!
Allegations of intimidation and attempted bribery of match officials by Escobar’s sicarios would however taint the feat. With one offering $250 000 to the referees in one incident, and another threatening: “If Atlético Nacional de Medellín does not win, you will go home in coffins!”
Plata o plomo (money or bullets) becomes Escobar’s and fellow narcos’ mantra intended to hoodwink referees – provoking the fed up officials to go on a strike! Unfazed, the narcos subsequently kidnapped a referee, Armando Pérez who upon being released is reminded that any official who issue wrong decisions on the pitch would be killed – prompting fellow referee, Jesús Diaz to remark that ‘all that remains is for them to kill a referee.’ Diaz’s comment would shortly materialize when, after Escobar deemed his side to had been robbed by the officiating of referee Álvaro Ortega in a game, he had him killed in a November 15, 1989 incident witnessed by Diaz!
On June 19, 1991 Escobar voluntarily gave himself up for incarceration on his own terms at a facility dubbed La Catedral after accepting a government offer of admitting to charges in return for a lenient sentence. There, the narco would stage a coup by convincing Argentine great, Diego Maradona –who at the time was a convicted drug trafficker in Italy and was serving a lengthy football ban – to play in an exhibition match at ‘Hotel Escobar’ (La Catedral) for ‘an enormous fee!’
The guest of El Patrón (Escobar), El Pibe de Oro (the golden boy, Maradona, id est) would be treated to a lavish shindig replete with beautiful women smuggled into the facility right under the noses of Colombian authorities!
Accepting Escobar’s unusual invitation wasn’t surprising given that whilst playing for Napoli, he gambolled in the patronage of Naples’ Camorra (Mafioso) and the Giuliano crime family!
Eventually on December 2, 1993, Escobar, was shot dead on a Medellín neighbourhood’s rooftop whilst pursued by three operatives of Bloque de Búsqueda (Search Bloc – a unit created by Colombia’s President Virgilio Barco tasked with tracking down and ending Escobar).
At the zenith of his criminal enterprise, Forbes magazine would estimate Escobar’s wealth at $3 billion!
At the larger-than-life el capo de capos’ funeral on December 3, 1993, lyrics of a favourite Atlético Nacional song titled, ‘When I die’, which go thus: When I die, I want my coffin to be painted green and white like my heart . . . would be manifested in the form of a coffin containing his remains being draped with a green and white flag of the club!
Enter Andrés Escobar. El caballero del fútbol (the gentleman of football) emerged as a breakout centre back within Atlético Nacional’s reserves and progressed to feature for Maturana’s teams at club and national levels – with him scoring in Colombia’s 1–1 draw with England at Wembley Stadium in 1988 and being part of the club’s Copa Libertadores victory in 1989.
Andrés Escobar’s feats would be attributed as Pablo Escobar’s football project beginning to blossom!
Italy’s AC Milan would offer him a contract and he’d be selected to Colombia’s squad to the USA ’94 FIFA World Cup – an inclusion which would result in his death from a fallout of having diverted a ball into his own goal pending a group game against the host team.
On July 2, 1994, back in Colombia, he would be killed by the gun of a bodyguard to two ex-Medellín Cartel narcos at a Medellín nightclub – with speculation subsequently swirling as to whether he was killed for scoring an own goal or for causing powerful narcos to lose a bet.
Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela would succumb to lymphoma in a California prison medical centre in 2022 – while Miguel remains incarcerated at the Loretto Federal Correctional Institution, where he is due for release in 2028.
Author, David Arrowsmith was born in London but is half-Colombian (his mother, Carolina Ospina Lleras is Colombian).
A trade paperback, Narcoball is published by Octopus and distributed in South Africa by Jonathan Ball Publishers.
Available at leading bookstores countrywide, it retails for R450.
