Colombia finally able to dream once more

Colombian football seemed to die with Andrés Escobar and drug dealer Pablo Escobar, says Ewan MacKenna.

At the end of the brilliant documentary, The Two Escobars, there’s an unsurprising sense of regret and mourning from its cast. For some, it was aimed at Andrés. For others, it was thrust towards Pablo. But the one uniting feature was the sorrow at the passing of an era in Colombian football that took much day-to-day hope with it. The national team captain and king of cocaine represented two key strands which made that side so good but by the time the 1994 World Cup reached its second round, a place they presumed they’d be before being crushed under expectation and threat, both were buried in their nation’s soil.

Colombia hobbled to one more World Cup but the heart and money had been ripped from their game.