The case was handed down to posterity by the alleged “hand” of Pablo Escobar Gaviria, the bloodthirsty leader of the infamous Medellín Cartel. What happened on the night of May 31, 1989 in the Campín between Atlético Nacional and Olimpia?
One of the episodes that even today continues to inspire extensive lines.
On site. Atlético Nacional de Medellín and Olimpia face to face for the Copa Libertadores de América title.
KNOW MORE: Olimpia measures Atlético Nacional for the lead
He Going match it was played in Defensores del Chaco, andl Dean won 2-0 and practically moored his second continental star.
However, in the return clash, played in Bogotá, the coffee team tied the series (2-2) and went to penalties: luck decided (5-4) that Atlético Nacional de Medellín would be the champion from America.
HE MYTH?
Many versions have spread over the years.
They are respected voices of sports journalism and connoisseurs of the Colombian underworld which indicate that the The drop in performance of the Paraguayans was due to the fact that Escobar would have threatened them so that they would lose or “they would not leave Colombia alive”, in the words of Gabriel ‘Loco’ González. “Silver or lead”, in the style of the Medellín Cartel.
another statement indicates that such intimation, if it existed, it would not have been directed to the entourage fringed, rather directly to the Argentine referee Juan Carlos Loustau.
“The pressure he put on her was just… send him a couple of people who told him (the referee) that the only thing they asked him to do was to ‘whistle well’ or else he would have to deal with my father,” he said. Sebastian Marroquin, or Juan Pablo Escobar, son of the missing drug lordin the Spanish program “El Chiringuito” at the time of revealing the methods of his infamous father.
KNOW MORE: Olimpia settles in Colombia awaiting the clash with Atlético Nacional
“When the match ended, before penalties, the referee told us ‘I already saved my family… now it’s up to you’. He was crying,” said Ever Hugo Almeida, former Olimpia DT and who played that final in the fringed goal.
An article in Terra Colombia stated that Escobar supported “without measure” the two teams from his city, Atlético Nacional and Independiente Medellín, who would have benefited from large amounts of money from drug trafficking, although he never directly became a member or president of any of the clubs.
“I’m not telling you that I had to take all the Nacional players to the farm where Pablo was and there I would give them their prizes for having won the Copa Libertadores”, assured Jaime Gaviria, Pablo Escobar’s first cousin and Terra’s reliable source for these stories.
An explosive and revealing story by Infobae América, published some time ago, maintained that Escobar effectively “broke the judges appointed for the final”, but that they did not give in to the pressure of the gangster and they were limited to carrying out their work on the grass. There were reprisals, but silence prevailed.
“After the years that have passed, we could say that these Argentine referees perfectly understood the message. Not that of Pablo Escobar Gaviria’s hit men, but the true message of life,” he said.
