So… listen to this… Everyone has seen Higuita’s scorpion kick… and I don’t mean every football fan, it is one of the most replayed moments in the history of sports… but, I gotta tell you, by then… Higuita was past his prime… and I’m not even talking about the fact that… you could very easily argue that the scorpion wasn’t even the most outlandish moment of his career, I mean this guy scored 43 goals… There was one match where he took the ball in his own box and dribbled all the way to the other side of the pitch, only being denied his goal because, out of sheer embarrassment, a defender said: “god damn it” and just kicked him onto the ground… but yeah… it really isn’t about all that, because think about it: Why would they keep one of the best dribblers in the world between the posts? The answer is obvious… behind all the madness, Higuita, standing 5 foot 8, was one of the greatest shot stoppers of all time… arguably the greatest penalty stopper ever and his… flashy flicks and tricks… weren’t all just for show, Higuita was the first through and through sweeper keeper 21 years before Manuel Neuer even got his debut… I truly believe that if, back then, the Ballon D’Or hadn’t been restricted to Europeans only… Higuita would have gotten nominated… come on… who else can say that FIFA changed the rules of football after watching them play? This guy is one of the most fascinating athletes of all time… even the pope requested to meet him and look, I haven’t even mentioned the fact he was sent to prison right in the middle of his prime for “handling business” for Pablo Escobar, his personal friend and the most wanted man on the planet… There's a reason this guy was known worldwide as “El Loco”, he was the maddest man this sport had ever seen but believe it or not, he was a literal boy scout when he was a kid… I mean, sort of… Look… as Higuita said it himself: “I come from the ghetto of Castilla, where many are born but few are raised”.
. . from day one he was right under the noses of the Medellin cartel and… not so fun fact, his name isn’t even René Higuita, it’s José Zapata, the thing is… his dad abandoned him the moment he was born, his mom literally had to beg him to even put his surname in the kid’s birth certificate, so once he grew up, he completely renounced his father’s name and went by his two middle names instead… but even then… his mom passed away and it was his grandma who ended up raising him, she made him an altar boy in the church, she made him join the boy scouts… anything so that he wouldn’t fall in the hands of the cartel… but in the end, what really kept him out of the streets was football… Higuita joined a local academy and suddenly that was all he cared for… he was the most talented player on his team, tormenting defenders, scoring goals left and right, but the day Independiente Medellin, one of the best clubs in town, finally sent over some scouts… against all the odds, every goalkeeper was either sick or injured, so the manager asked who wanted to go in goal and Higuita, always down to try anything once, quickly jumped in between the posts and by the end, somehow, he was the number one name on the scout’s list… Without ever even meaning to become a keeper, by the age of 15, he was being selected to play for his district and becoming a national champion… By 17, he was leading the Colombian under-19s to the world cup and moving to Bogotá to sign for the great Millonarios… and by the end of his first season, not only had he forced his way onto the starting eleven, he was on 7 goals in 16 matches… 0.
43 goals per game as a goalkeeper… for comparison, Ronaldo averaged 0. 41 across his entire Man United career… Regardless, then, his childhood club Atlético Nacional came in with an offer and despite the fact they had only won the league 4 times in 38 years, far less than Millonarios… Higuita just couldn’t say no and well… this seems to go unnoticed by a lot of people, but the Colombian cartels were obsessed with football, the Bogotá cartel financed Millonarios, the Cali cartel financed América De Cali and Escobar’s men, the Medellin cartel… financed Atlético Nacional and, with so much rivalry between the three, they pretty much got into a pissing contest, seeing who could bring in more money, more influence, more power to their clubs, for good or bad, starting a golden age of Colombian football, just as the golden generation of Valderrama, Rincon, Asprilla and Higuita made it to the top… it was perfect timing… and then… then came Francisco Maturana, the greatest manager in the history of Colombia… just happened to take charge of precisely… the national team… and Atlético Nacional… When he saw Higuita, he was the first to realize there was a method to his madness, a lightbulb went off in his head and like an oracle, he saw the future of football, one where the goalkeeper would no longer act like mannequin between the posts, as he said: “With René, we have 11 outfield players”. .
. right on that first year, Colombia beat Maradona’s Argentina to the Copa América’s bronze medal… the next, they beat Brazil 2 nil in the pre-olympic tournament and by 1989, Colombian football changed forever… With America de Cali, having just lost 3 Copa Libertadores finals in a row, there was a sense that Colombia would forever be left out of the party, watching as Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and even Paraguay dominated the competition… especially since, that year, Higuita’s Atlético Nacional, a team that had gone 7 years without even stepping foot in the competition, was the one tasked with representing Colombia… but 11 matches later, against all odds, they were in the final… and everyone’s eyes were staring at a 22 year old goalkeeper that somehow had not only scored twice in the competition, but had assisted one of the semi final goals with a pass straight from his own box… and thank god they were watching, because he was about to put on a show… At the final’s away leg against Olimpia, they were so clearly dominated that when they came out of it with a 2 nil defeat, the commentators were calling it a miracle, saying that… Higuita… had just proven he was the best in the world… and that was before the home match… When Olimpia arrived in Medellin, the entire country was behind Atlético Nacional, holding on to whatever hope there was left that they would make history… and as the second half got underway, with the result still fixed at a goalless draw, Olimpia conceded an own goal and 20 minutes later, the match was tied… at the end of the day, all would be decided on penalties and that was the moment… they knew they would win… as Luis Carlos Perea said: “The team knew who we had between the posts, there was no point asking god for help, we all agreed that: “in René Higuita, we trust””. .
. The minute it all got going, El Loco saved the first penalty… eventually one of his teammates missed and suddenly, there was one penalty left to be taken, if whoever took it missed it, they were out… no one had the guts… no one, but the goalkeeper… Higuita ran up to the ball himself, smacked it down the middle, sent the team into sudden death and from that moment, he was invincible… The moment the ball hit the net, he got in position and saved another penalty… but his teammate hit the bar… then Higuita saved another and his teammate missed… so he saved a fourth penalty… and his teammate missed again… and just as everyone started to think not even Higuita could beat the curse… Olympia sent one over the bar and seconds later, Atlético Nacional were the first Colombian team to win the Libertadores… 15 years would go by, before it happened again… Higuita insisted that he didn’t win it alone but ask anyone of his teammates and to this day, not a single one of them believes that… Higuita was their hero… Over the rest of the year, he led Nacional to the Copa Interamericana, he damn near shocked the world, keeping Van Basten’s AC Milan goalless for 119 minutes in the Intercontinental Cup, just 1 minute short of sending them into a penalty shootout where we all know what would have happened… By the end of the year, he had been named the best goalkeeper in all of South America… and then, with the man finishing his club season with 11 goals in 30 matches, a better average than… let’s say, Frank Lampard for Chelsea… he topped it all off by leading Colombia to their first world cup in 28 years and their mission was clear… as Higuita said: “We wanted to shout: here in Colombia, we got football too… We wanted to show the world Colombia was more than Pablo Escobar”. .
. First game, Higuita kept Colombia’s first ever clean sheet and they took their first ever world cup win, 2 nil against Saudi Arabia… Second game, he saved yet another penalty but they ended up succumbing 1 nil to Yugoslavia regardless, since after all, no Colombian player had ever even watched Yugoslavia play… and in the end, they needed a draw against Germany to make it to the knockouts… Look, Germany were absolute monsters… Matthäus, Völler, Klinsmann, Brehme, Littbarski and Beckenbauer as the coach… I mean, spoiler alert, but they were literally about to win the world cup that year… as Perea said: “We all stared at them and thought: “they’re gigantic”. .
. they would use these boots with really long studs… when we walked side by side along the tunnel the germans were like horses, marching to war”. .
. they were all shaking to their knees… but Higuita told them: “They can march all they want… but today, we’re gonna make them dance”. .
. he was just fearless, an inspiration to everyone around him, as one player explained: “He made me ashamed of myself, watching him come out his box and doing our job for us, made me feel like “Damn, we gotta just go for it, I should be the one doing that… not this madman with the crazy wig”. .
. but as much as his inspiration led Colombia to dominate the giants, getting chance after chance, playing beautiful football… they kept missing and at the very last minute Germany scored… any other way, they would have given up, but in the end Valderrama remembered that: “If Higuita has the guts to do all he does, then why should I not be able to nutmeg a german” and with a series of one twos, he put Rincon through and he slipped it between the legs of Illgner… it was the most cheered goal in Colombian history, they were in the knockouts for the first time… but in the last 16, everything went wrong… In extra time, trailing one goal behind against Cameroon, Perea felt Roger Milla charging at him like a train, passed the ball back to Higuita in a rush… who desperately tried to dribble past him, only to lose possession and watch him kick it into the empty net… as he explained: “Had I conceded 3 or 4 more, it wouldn’t matter but then Redin came”. .
. and made it 2 to 1, meaning that mistake was what killed their chances of making it to the quarters… Higuita never forgave himself, no matter how many times Valderrama insisted that: “not one fan pointed their finger at him… not one”. .
. no matter how many fans were waiting for him in Colombia with banners thanking him for everything… not even being named the best goalkeeper in South America for the second year seemed enough… not even when his performance permanently changed football forever… That tournament was often referred to as “the worst world cup of all time”. .
. out of 15 knockouts matches, 13 ended in penalty shootouts, 1 nil or 2 to 1 wins… since back then, goalkeepers could just pick the ball off the ground if a teammate passed it back to them, they wasted time like nothing you’ve ever seen, it was complete anti football and just as everyone began despising those keepers, here comes this crazy colombian refusing to pick up the ball no matter what, charging at the forwards, putting in passes… FIFA were so stunned, so entertained by this madman, that they scheduled a meeting and rewrote the books of football, forbidding any goalkeepers from ever picking up the ball like that again… and they literally named it “the Higuita law”. .
. as the man said it himself: “I changed the rules of football, not even Pelé or Maradona could have done that”. .
. Regardless, don’t think for a second that he slowed down, the next year, he led Nacional to their first league title in a decade… nearly got them to another Copa Libertadores final…. and in the Copa America, he even got Colombia to top a group with Brazil and Uruguay in it, despite the fact his teammates couldn’t even score a goal a game… then he finally caved in to the offers he had repeatedly gotten from European clubs, following his eternal partner Francisco Maturana to Valladolid, though it would end catastrophically, with the club falling into the gutter and being unable to pay his salary, scaring him off after only 15 matches and robbing us of a proper chance to watch Higuita at the top of european football… However, what he didn’t know is that things in Colombia would be much worse… You see, 1 month before the Copa America, Pablo Escobar had finally surrendered to the authorities and been “imprisoned” in La Catedral… I put that in quotes because well, Escobar owned the place, a lot of the guards were his own henchman and he lived in luxury, with a football pitch, a bar, a jacuzzi and a waterfall… he had almost everything, the one thing he lacked was freedom… so he began inviting people to visit him and one day, he invited Higuita… it wasn’t the first time they met, according to rumors, Higuita might have even influenced him to hand himself off to the cops, telling he was ruining the image of the country… but… in the end, he was the one who came out with his reputation tarnished… despite Higuita claiming the two weren’t that close, people saw him as a hypocrite, claiming to use football as a way to clean up the country’s image while he went around partying with the very man who made Colombia into a narco state… so imagine how the people reacted, when Escobar managed to escape prison right after being warned by some outside source that the government was gonna move him into a high security facility… things… were about to get rough… About a year later, as one of the biggest manhunts in history took place, Escobar decided to kidnap the daughter of rival drug lord Carlos Molina and in one of the most surreal plot twists you could possibly imagine, thanks to the public perception that Higuita was close with Escobar and assuming he’d never go as far as laying a finger on the most adored man in the country, Molina called upon Higuita to deliver the ransom… but let’s be real, as gentlemanly as he pretended that request was… it was more like a command, and a kid from Castilla knew damn well what the consequences of his refusal would be… Higuita picked up 300 thousand dollars, went home, talked to his wife, they both agreed there was nothing wrong with saving a little girl from the hands of a criminal and then… a month later, the order came… he did everything as he was told and though a crowd of fans surrounded him just as the exchange was to take place, leading some to think that he was only being used as a distraction, it all went as smoothly as you could hope… the problem was that Molina did not let him leave his house before he accept a 50 thousand dollar reward… as Higuita would claim: “It never crossed my mind that that would be the reason my entire world would collapse on me”.
. . According to Colombian law, profiting in any way for your involvement in a kidnapping makes you a sort of accomplice… and with the police wanting to make an example out of Higuita since the day he first visited Escobar, one day, they showed up at his door and threw him into a cell… they searched his home, questioned him, at times brutally, if you know what I mean and found nothing… though they could see that day was the extent of his involvement… they insisted that he either gave away Escobar’s location or he’d rot in jail… 7 months went by, Higuita went on a hunger strike, his teammates used every world cup qualifier to call out for his release, the fans chanted “freedom” in the stadiums… and even when the courts ordered his release, the warden illegally kept him for two more days, telling him that: “I’m the one who decides who comes and goes”.
. . To further add to his trauma, Higuita came out of prison too weak from his hunger strike to make it to the world cup and with the cartels still fired up from the last tournament and accepting nothing less than glory… when one of Higuita’s longest running teammates for club and country, Andrés Escobar, scored an own goal, knocking Colombia out of the group stage, they went after him and… well… ended his life… and with everyone blaming the team’s lack of fighting spirit on his absence, Higuita was left to blame himself for his friend’s death… he was still only 27 years old… and yet, as he said: “When they let me out I had a chip on my shoulder, if before I was brave, now my courage was doubled”.
. . Right in the following year he took another league title… and the one after that, he put on another of the greatest performances of all time… going into the semi finals of the Libertadores against River Plate, looking damn near unbeaten the whole time, scoring their only goal through a free kick to send the game into another penalty shootout, guessing the right side to dive in 7 out of the 8 penalties, scoring his own through a panenka and then saving the decisive one to send them to the final… where unfortunately they’d lose out to Mário Jardel’s Grémio though….
that wouldn’t be the most memorable moment of that year, neither would it be the fact that in the Copa América he would again both save one and score the decisive penalty in a shootout, before hitting the free kick that earned him another third place medal… no… 2 years earlier, Higuita had watched a kid try a bicycle kick as he recorded a commercial and thought to himself, what if I did that backwards, deciding then and there that: “I’m gonna do it in a match… when? whenever I get the chance… maybe in Castilla… maybe in Wembley”. .
. and so, when late into a friendly match against England, in Wembley, Jamie Redknapp overhit his cross, sending the ball towards goal… Higuita jumped, lifted his legs over his head and smacked the ball away with his heels… as the commentator said that day: “Goodness me! Have you ever seen anything like that?
”. . .
