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Soccer deadly for Colombians
The next day, he and the rest of the Colombians now cavorting in the sunshine in a loose-limbed, pressure-free practice would play Team USA in the first round of soccer's 1994 World Cup, a match they would surely win to advance to the next level. At home, his family and friends would gather round the television to share the triumph.
He was 27 years old, playing for his country in the world's biggest sporting event, and what could be better than that?
Ten days later, he was dead.
When word came, the irony of it hung in the air like a shroud.
If he'd been a fraction less of an athlete, that afternoon in the Rose Bowl against the Americans, he might have been in Paris next week getting ready for another World Cup run. A half-step faster, he might have gone home a hero; a half-step slower and he'd have been just another player on a team that lost a match.
But, racing desperately back to intercept a pass that was going to a U.S. player who'd need only tap it into the empty net with the 'keeper far out of position, Andres Escobar got just enough of his toe on the ball to deflect it into his own net.
It was going in anyway. There was no way the U.S. player could have missed, no way the 'keeper could have recovered in time. But the last toe to touch it was Andres Escobar's, and it was the deciding goal in America's 2-1 victory.
Five days later, back in Colombia, Andres Escobar was sitting in his car when a man poked a gun through the open window.
"Thanks for the goal!" he snarled, and shot him dead.
In North America, our passion for our own national game stops at cursing the early departure of our picks in the Stanley Cup pool. In the lands where soccer is king, those passions can flare unchecked.
Last year in Canada's failed qualifying bid, the front page of a paper in Kingston, Jamaica, carried a plea from the police chief that all spectators leave their knives, rocks and other missiles at home and check their guns at the stadium door.
In El Salvador, the match commissioner assured the Canadians that the field would be surrounded by shoulder-to-shoulder police in full riot gear to prevent a repeat of the riot after a match against Mexico.
"But if Canada should win," he said, "come to the centre of the field and we'll take you out by helicopter."
That is why the security forces in Paris have their fingers crossed. And it is why, in East Rutherford, N.J., where Colombia plays a pre-tournament friendly against Scotland this weekend, there is a palpable tension in the air. Because, back home in Bogota, Colombian coach Hernan Dario Gomez and forward Victor Hugo Aristizabal have both picked up the phone to hear death threats.
Gomez, you see, selected Aristizabal to the team. It was not a popular choice. The callers want him off. If not ...
The threats haven't worked. Both men are under 24-hour guard, but neither coach nor player has backed down, and Faustino Asprilla, the free-spirited striker, has leaped into the fray with a threat of his own: If the national federation drops Aristizabal, then he, Asprilla, will not be in Paris.
"I'm tired of these threats," he says.
They could have been crank calls, of course.
Still, it's hard to forget that June day in California when Andres Escobar laughed his way through practice, or the looks on the faces of the Colombian players after the loss to the U.S., when some said they dreaded going home. Or what happened to Andres Escobar, when he did.
NEXT ROUNDS: Round of 16 || Quarter-finals || Semi-finals
GROUP A: Brazil, Morocco, Norway, Scotland
GROUP B: Austria, Cameroon, Chile, Italy
GROUP C: Denmark, France, Saudi Arabia, South Africa
GROUP D: Bulgaria, Nigeria, Paraguay, Spain
GROUP E: Belgium, Holland, Mexico, South Korea
GROUP F: Germany, Iran, United States, Yugoslavia
GROUP G: Colombia, England, Romania, Tunisia
GROUP H: Argentina, Croatia, Jamaica, Japan