Freddie Rincon, Colombia national team legend, passed away this week after a fatal car accident in which he suffered a number of serious head injuries. The best way to tell the life story of the Colombian midfielder begins, like countless Colombian football stories, from the 1990 World Cup.
In the last game of the home stage in that World Cup Colombia needed a draw against a strong West Germany to advance. The Germans went up to 0: 1 in the 88th minute (Pierre Litwerski scored), but deep into extra time, a pass from Carlos Valladrama came to Rincon, who comfortably kicked between the legs of goalkeeper Bodo Ilgner and put the ball into the net. Colombia advanced to the next round, and this is the only game in that World Cup that West Germany, which finished as the winner of the tournament, did not win.
This goal was the highlight of Rincon’s career. He reached impressive heights even after that, when he played for Napoli and Real Madrid (21 appearances in two years), but the most memorable moment of all is the same ovulation for the world champion on the way. Like other great football stories from the country, like the story of the two Escobars, it cannot be cut off from crime, drugs, and premature death.
Before coming to Naples, Rincon played for Colombian America de Cali, a team owned by drug lord Hilberto Rodriguez Urjuela, one of the leaders of the Cali cartel that at its peak supplied 80% of cocaine in the United States and 90% in Europe. The same Rodriguez Urjuela, by the way, appeared in the second and third seasons of Narcos, the Colombian crime series.
Rincon himself was not part of the cartel. The profits were invested in America de Cali, and Rincon’s future as a player was influenced by the owners’ decisions. “They both prevented me from leaving the club several times,” he told Brazilian Fox Sports. “The owners always supported us, but told us to be on their side in every situation. They told us that very bad things would happen if we failed in the 1994 World Cup.” In that World Cup, it will be recalled, Anders Escobar scored an own goal that led to his murder a month later.
Two years after that World Cup, Atletico de Cali entered the US administration’s blacklist as a conduit for drug trafficking. She left just years later, in 2013. It is important to emphasize the connection between Colombian football and the drug industry that operated in the country at the time: the drug barons, from Pablo Escobar to Rodriguez Orahola, bet millions on football games and skewed the results of entire leagues. Some used it as an attempt to make an extra amount of money, some as an attempt to launder capital and refer to the profit from illegal activity as “kosher profit”.
Although in that 1996 Rincon played for Real Madrid, but after a short period in Europe he returned to South America. In 2004, shortly after retiring from football, he met a childhood friend named Pablo Rayo Montano, a Colombian drug lord. The two renewed contact while Rincon served as the coach of a small team in Brazil. Two years later, in 2006, 47 tons of cocaine were seized at Montano’s home. The comprehensive investigation also brought up Rincon’s name, and the Colombian midfielder remained in custody for 123 days in Brazil on money laundering charges, until he was released without being convicted of any offense.
Rincon tried to move on. He moved to Panama and started selling motorboats, after a failed comeback attempt for the Colombian league and it looks like he is ready to go on with his life, but in 2015 Interpol knocked on the door. The International Police Organization arrived at Rincon’s home and stopped the connection after investigating the Montano drug network, in which the name of the former footballer was mentioned once again. About a year later, he wins again. Authorities ruled that Rincon could not be convicted of money laundering, with Rincon himself also claiming that it was done without his knowledge. It is important to emphasize that he was never convicted of money laundering or drug trafficking. Twice he was interrogated on the subject, tried and acquitted.
Rincon’s life reflects in a sense an entire generation of Colombian footballers who were lost. On the one hand, there were incredible achievements on the pitch – he was the first Colombian to play for Real Madrid and the Champions League, scoring for West Germany’s net and beating Argentina 0-5. On the other hand, drugs have haunted him throughout his career. Colombia has served for years as a country that supplies drugs to the entire world, and it has taken over every area of society for years.
It could be that the career of Rincon and his entire generation would have looked different if he had grown up in a different country. According to his version, and according to the various courts, he was twice imprisoned because he hung out with dubious people, to say the least, and not because he committed a crime himself. He is the poster boy of Colombian football from those years: a huge talent with memorable moments like the same gate between his legs, but at the same time unable to escape the drug affair. At some point in his life, and in his death, he was the right man in the wrong place.