August 1, 2019
Marco Fatticcioni
René Higuita, the zero season of Narcos
How did René Higuita, one born under the sign of the virgin to remain known generally for a "scorpion? Question wacky in more and less passionate footballing era.
But some fundamental parallel distance between the Tropic of Cancer and Capricorn, in the '90s.
What then seems to tell the characters from the TV series. Almost as if it opened Netflix, including an episode of Stranger Things and another Narcos. Because from the Cali cartel to that of Guadalajara it takes little. An authentic click, a switch between the seasons of the series inspired by the story of Pablo Escobar. Think then if the goalkeeper of those years the Colombian national football team, was linked to its most famous drug lord in history. Born in the sixties in the city where he died Escobar, Medellin. María Dioselina gives birth to a child named René. René Higuita.
El Loco del Barrio
The childhood of this child is signed first by the lack of a father, then by the untimely death of his mother. He takes refuge, as all the children raised in the streets of the barrio, in football. He began as a discreet striker, but grows admiring the exploits of Hugo Gatti, goalkeeper of Boca Juniors and the Argentine national team. Eventually he will succeed, too, like Jorge Campos, to mix the two vocations. He will be the goalkeeper of the Colombian National '87 to '99. He, however, also be able to score during his career about fifty times. But this goalkeeper, the top one hundred seventy-two cm with that unmistakable curly hair, able to reinvent the role of it in anticipation of this year that his colleagues could not even imagine at the time. He was one of the first goalkeepers to use your feet, without flinching in the face of dribbling and pulling too many penalties on offense.
René Higuita is the Colombian icon that has divided his country, the world and football. A fanciful cocktail of genius and madness, with a large dose of rebellion. He is the son of Colombia there and in the field it was undisputed representative, along with teammate (and hair) Valderrama. As always is the field to paint as a fresco by Botero synthesis of what Higuita has been and will always be: "El loco."
Scorpio Wembley
London, 6 September 1995. England is challenging Colombia in a friendly match at their home ground. Jamie Redknapp receives the ball from the right and tries a lob from standstill. The shot is not compelling, the parade seems to call, but it is there that what is discounted meets whimsical folly goalkeeper of Coffee Growers. Higuita rises from the ground with perfect naturalness, expects that the ball extends beyond the head, measures the balance for the dip and strikes the ball with his heels in a flawless execution. A simple gesture, commonplace with "el loco" which appears unfazed and continues to play as if nothing had happened. That's where he was born under the sign of Virgo, will become for ever remembered as the true inventor of the "move the scorpion."
"René Higuita is completely crazy, but he's a champion."
Never better relationship could draw the then scout Atlético Nacional in Medellin. But that figure curly embodies the most controversial aspects of a country like Colombia of those years. The cocaine, alcohol, friendship with Pablo Escobar, the jail. In South America we are not nicknamed "El loco" by chance. Higuita had a great friendship with the powerful drug lord, why in 1993 was even arrested for having mediated in the release of a friend, linked to Escobar, who was kidnapped by Narcos. Which is why he jumped USA '94, with strong public repercussions on the opinion of the people about him. Ups and downs that depict clearly what is undoubtedly one of the most controversial figures of world football and remember.
Maybe it was better to go to sleep rather than looking undeterred that Colombia and Paraguay repeated at 3 am. It happens that you come across like that nostalgic dreams, in novels so full of mythical stories and characters that make us imagine staying on beaches around the world. But it's better that way, because football is above all this: inspiration and imagination. Flying with the thoughts and discover new people and places. You hear a child playing with friends of him in the tough streets of the barrio. It hopes that that soul so raw, genuine and tough can still exist in the Futbol. Because in the end those who are football men, in all their facets. And Higuita 's summed up, so to him, in the best way: "I'm not proud of everything I've done, I'm just a poor sinner."
And after all, dear "Loco", we all are.
Thanks to the pen of CasaBaggio .
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