Last night, ESPN’s “30 for 30” aired one of the most anticipated documentaries in its critically acclaimed series of 30 sports-themed documentaries set to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the network.
The Tale of Two Escobars chronicled the lives and deaths of two men from Medellin, Columbia who didn’t know each other, but whose lives were intertwined by violence and their passion for soccer.
Pablo Escobar was a ruthless Columbian drug lord who oversaw the multi-million dollar a day cocaine enterprise, the Medellin drug cartel. At the time of his death he was worth an estimated $9 billion. It is said that Pablo ordered the murders of 5,500 people in Bogota, Columbia — mostly innocent bystanders, police and political figures who got in the way of his goal to control the government of Bogota.
The Medellin cartel was responsible for supplying the majority of the cocaine sold on US streets from the 1970s to the 1990s. Pablo Escobar was killed in a hail of bullets in 1993 after George Bush, the U.S. president at the time, put a hit out on him. He was the first of the two Escobars to die
The second was Andrés Escobar, who died a year later at age 27 when he had the misfortune to score a goal in his own net during the 1994 World Cup. The Columbians are fanatical supporters of the sport of futbol. Rival drug Lords who ran three of the biggest drug cartels in Columbia had bet millions in drug profits on the outcome of the 1994 match.
There are reports that individual team members of the Columbian Atlético Nacional team received death threats and the 2-year-old son of one of the players was kidnapped before the match.
So it was under this extreme pressure that the players took to the field in the Rose Bowl on June 22, to play a first round match against the United States in the 1994 world Cup.
The USA won 2-1 when Andrés scored an own goal — a fateful goal that proved to be his death sentence. His intention was to kick the ball to his goalie who would put the ball back into play. But his goalie miscalculated the ball and his team was eliminated in the first round.
When Andrés returned to Medellin, he was the most hated man in Columbia. On July 2, a mob of angry futbol fans surrounded his car outside a bar. He was shot 12 times.
Escobar’s murderer, Humberto Castro Muñoz, allegedly screamed “goaaaal!” for each of the 12 bullets that hit Andrés. Muñoz was convicted of Escobar’s death in 1995, and sentenced to 43 years in prison. He was released 10 years later on good behavior.
