Soccer in Sun and Shadow

Parricide

At the end of the southern winter of 1993, Colombia’s national team played a World Cup qualifier in Buenos Aires. When the Colombian players took the field, they were greeted with a shower of whistles, boos, and insults. When they left, the crowd gave them a standing ovation that echoes to this day.

Argentina lost 5–0. As usual, the goalkeeper carried the cross of the defeat, but this time the visitors’ victory was celebrated as never before. To a one, the fans cheered the Colombians’ incredible style, a feast of legs, a joy for the eyes, an ever-changing dance that invented its own music as the match progressed. The lordly play of “El Pibe” Balderrama, a working-class mulatto, was the envy of princes, and the black players were the kings of this carnival: not a soul could get past Perea or stop “Freight Train” Valencia; not a soul could deal with the tentacles of “Octopus” Asprilla or block the bullets fired by Rincón. Given the color of their skin and the intensity of their joy, those Colombians looked like Brazil in its glory years.

The Colombian press called the massacre a “parricide.” Half a century before, the founding fathers of soccer in Bogotá, Medellín, and Cali were Argentines. But life has its surprises: Pedernera, Di Stéfano, Rossi, Rial, Pontoni, and Moreno fathered a child who turned out to be Brazilian.