The Guardian has a good article on FC Dallas’s coach Oscar Pareja and his formative years in Colombia and his association with Robin Hood drug lord Pablo Escobar playing for his club Deportivo Independiente Medellin. In those days in the 80s and 90s, Colombian soccer was firmly in the hands of various drug cartels and players and referees were regularly intimidated into providing favourable results. Pareja talks about his meeting with Escobar and the unreal quality of playing soccer for him. Part magic realism, part social welfare.
Escobar was of course, notorious in equal measure for the bloody drug war and his robbing the rich philosophy providing housing and education for Medellin’s poor. Pareja was also part of the infamous 1994 World Cup Cafeteros squad which so much was expected from only for them to crash out ignominiously in the group stage. Andres Escobar, the defender paid for that shame with his life, guilty of scoring an own goal against the USA, later gunned down in a Medellin city by a hired killer of a drug lord who had lost a substantial sum of money on that game.
Pareja has forged a new identity at FC Dallas, sparking a youth revolution and bringing a slice of Colombiana in the mix including Fabian Castillo (seen midweek blistering a Tottenham XI in the All Stars game) and Michael Barrios. Dallas heads the MLS Western Conferences table ahead of the Vancouver Whitecaps and LA Galaxy, sides with higher wattage players.