The Story of Colombian Player Andres Escobar
The goal that killed the one who scored it
The history of football will not forget the story of the Colombian player Andreas Escobar, who paid with his life for a small mistake he committed during a match for the Colombian national team in the 1994 World Cup, which was held in the United States of America.
The story of the Colombian player began in the group stage of the most prominent tournament in the world.
In that tournament, the chances of the Colombian team qualifying for the advanced stages were very high, thanks to the outstanding performance of the players during the World Cup qualifying matches, especially after they managed to defeat the Argentine team by five goals to nil, which nominated them strongly to win the World Cup.
However, the Colombian team started the tournament with a heavy loss to Romania, 3-1. The Colombians' hopes of qualifying for the second round were focused on the team's remaining two matches in the first round.
The leaders of the Colombian gangs sent death threats to the players if the team lost to the United States in the second match because that would have meant losing a lot of money on betting.
The match against the USA was decisive and fateful, so the Colombian team strove hard to win in order to maintain qualification hopes. However, the team conceded the first goal in the 34th minute.
That minute was the beginning of the end for Escobar; He was the one who scored that goal by mistake when the USA striker passed a cross, which Escobar tried to cut off the ball, but instead, he shoved it into his own net.
That match ended 2-1 in favor of the United States, and the Colombians' chances of qualifying were nil after the second loss in the tournament.
The Colombian fans blamed the loss on the player Escobar, and as a result, he received a lot of insults from the public, and through the media, accusing him of deliberately scoring that
own goal.
Escobar tried unsuccessfully to convince the fans that what had happened was a mistake and that he had not intended to do so.
Escobar faced a lot of pressure from all directions, while he held on to hope, so he wrote an article in a local newspaper in which he stated that life does not stop at an event, and that “we have choices, either despair that paralyzes us, or we rise again and sow hope".
Things have calmed down relatively in Colombia, and the media no longer directs its arrows toward the player Escobar, days passed, and the Colombian public began to forget what Escobar did.
But the Colombian mafia did not forget this and took it upon themselves to punish Escobar for his act.
On that fateful day, Escobar was leaving a restaurant in one of the Colombian cities with his friends, at the door of that restaurant, Escobar received 12 bullets in his body, while the members of the mafia who carried out the “revenge” operation ran away.
Everyone was shocked by the news of Escobar's death, and many shed tears for him, especially after the interview published by a journalist after Escobar's death (which he had conducted with him before the World Cup).
in that interview, the journalist asked Escobar why he loved football and did not practice the famous sport of bullfighting in Colombia, and the player replied without hesitation: “In football, there is no blood, no one dies, football is life, so how do you want me to play a sport in which there is death?”
This article was previously published on qatarmoments.To see the original article, click here