Andres Escobar, 20 years on #Remembrance

An own goal at USA 94 led to horrific ramifications for Colombia's captain, who paid the heaviest of prices for the failings of society as much as his national team

Colombia's captain, Andrés Escobar, lies on the ground after scoring an own goal at USA 94. The following month, he was shot dead. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

"Life doesn't end here. We have to go on. Life cannot end here. No matter how difficult, we must stand back up. We only have two options: either allow anger to paralyse us and the violence continues, or we overcome and try our best to help others. It's our choice. Let us please maintain respect. My warmest regards to everyone. It's been a most amazing and rare experience. We'll see each other again soon because life does not end here"

Colombia captain Andrés Escobar writes in Bogota's El Tiempe newspaper following his country's elimination from USA 1994.

Despite what cynics blessed with the gift of twenty-twenty hindsight might have you believe, Pele's suggestion that Colombia would at least make the semi-finals of USA 94 wasn't a crazy shot in the dark. Those would come later, six of them; bullets fired in a Medellín nightclub car park during a row that occurred in the early hours of 2 July, 1994. They would ring around the world, rendering millions incredulous that the captain of Colombia had been murdered, shot six times in the back, apparently as revenge for his contribution to his own team's elimination from a World Cup that was not yet over. It seemed that for no crime more heinous than accidentally scoring an own goal during a football match, Andrés Escobar had been gunned down in cold blood.

Fans pay tribute to Andrés Escobar at the Holland v Ireland game at USA '94.

A squad paralysed by fear

A frightened shadow of the fur coat-wearing maverick who would later pitch up at Newcastle United, Faustino Asprilla remembered everyone at the meeting being "really tense", paralysed by fear and with nobody saying a word. "And that," recalls Maturana "is how we entered the field." Despite, or perhaps because of their terror, Colombia threw the kitchen sink at the USA from the get-go. "We attacked from all angles, but the ball wouldn't go in," remembers Adolfo Valencia. "We kept attacking but we couldn't score," confirmed Álvarez. "A moment came when you start to remember what happened, bad thoughts flood your mind." In the 22nd minute, the psychological floodgates opened.

At full stretch in an effort to cut out a low, curling John Harkes cross into the penalty area from the inside left, Escobar made contact with the ball and sent it rolling past the hopelessly wrong-footed Córdoba and into his own goal. Following a few seconds of quiet reflection as he lay flat on his back with his head in his hands contemplating the first own goal of his professional career, the stony-faced Escobar rose to his feet, glanced to his right and walked slowly towards the halfway line. If he was mulling over the seriousness of the possible consequences, he hid it fairly well. Watching the match on TV in Medellín, his nephew was in no doubt. "In that moment, my nine-year-old son said to me 'Mommy, they're going to kill Andrés," Escobar's sister told the makers of The Two Escobars. "I replied: 'No sweetheart, people aren't killed for mistakes. Everyone in Colombia loves Andrés'."

Andrés Escobar in action for Colombia v USA. Photograph: Shaun Botterill/Allsport

He was certainly well-liked by his team-mates, who considered him blameless. "He had to make a play on the ball and unfortunately it went in," said midfielder Alexis Garcìa. "I saw Andrés's face and felt deep pain. It was like a premonition." The jig was all but up for Colombia: Earnie Stewart doubled the USA's lead in with a 52nd minute tap-in and that's how it stayed until the final minute, when Valencia scored his second consolation goal of the tournament. In the final round of group games,Colombia beat Switzerland 2-0 at the Stanford Stadium in Palo Alto, but the USA's defeat at the hands of Romania meant their fate was sealed. "It's a very trying moment," said Escobar. "Not only because of the error I committed, but also because in these games, our team could not fulfil our expectations."

Escobar was devastated by Colombia's World Cup exit and his very public contribution to it, a contribution he would never watch on television. Upon his return to Medellín, his friends and family rallied around in a bid to lift his spirits, while his friend César Mauricio Velásquez convinced him to write his cathartic "life doesn't end here" column for El Tiempe. "He forgot his worries," said his girlfriend. "There was warnings but Andrés was young and alive. He wanted to live his life. Had I known I'd have kept him home that night."

Killed by football or society?

That night. His last. Escobar decided to go out with friends for the first time since his return from the World Cup and called Chonto Herrera to invite him along. Herrera told him to stay in, advising Escobar it would probably be best if they laid low. His manager shared Herrera's concerns and told his player to be careful. "I said 'the streets are dangerous," Maturana recalled. "Here conflicts aren't resolved with fists. Andrés, stay at home. But Andrés said 'No, I must show my face to my people'."

According to eye-witness reports, Escobar showed his face to the wrong people. Upon arriving at Medellín's El Indio Bar with friends, the footballer enjoyed a few drinks and was happily talking to fellow revellers when a few people began insulting him, sarcastically cheering his error against the USA. Escobar left the premises, but the four-strong group hurling abuse followed him, continued their tirade and loudly labelled him a "faggot". Upset, Escobar drove his car across the car park in order to reason with his detractors, insisting his own goal had been "an honest mistake". An already tense situation escalated and at least one gun was produced and fired. Six bullets tore through the flesh and bone of Escobar's back as he sat at the wheel of his car. An ambulance was called, but it was too late. Less than 30 minutes later, Andrés Escobar was declared dead.

In the wake of the shooting, which was and remains widely assumed to be a revenge slaying perpetrated by gangsters who had shipped heavy losses betting on Colombia at the World Cup, two people gave the licence plate number of one of the vehicles in which the group responsible for the murder made their escape. It was registered to the Gallón brothers, Pedro and Juan, drug traffickers who had left Pablo Escobar's Medellín cartel to join the Pepes. According to Jhon Jairo Velásquez Vásquez, an enforcer for Pablo Escobar currently in prison for 300 murders, immediately after the shooting, the Gallóns approached Carlos Castano and paid him $3m to buy off the prosecutor's office and get them to focus their investigation on one of their bodyguards who had been present at the scene. Whether or not he actually pulled the trigger remains unknown, but Humberto Castro Muñoz confessed to Escobar's murder and was later sentenced to 43 years in prison, only to be released for good behaviour after serving just 11. His employers, the Gallóns, were cleared of any wrongdoing.

Despite ongoing speculation to the contrary, Vásquez insists Escobar's murder was not a revenge attack by disgruntled gamblers. "Andrés's mistake was talking back to those guys," he would later surmise in an interview from the prison in which he is held. "The Gallóns' egos were so inflated after taking down [Pablo] Escobar, they weren't going to allow someone to talk back, not even Andrés. It had nothing to do with betting; it was a fight, that's all."

More than 100,000 Colombians filed past Escobar's body as it lay in a wooden casket, draped with a green and white Nacional club flag, in a Medellín basketball arena. At his funeral, Colombia president Cesar Gaviria said the footballer was a victim of the "absurd violence" affecting the country. There were chants of "Justice! Justice!" from the thousands of mourners lining the streets as Escobar was taken to his final resting place. According to Escobar's friend César Mauricio Velásquez, the cries came from people "united in our pain, sending our prayers to the heavens for the soul of Andrés Escobar and for the soul of sport in Colombia". Weeping fans threw flowers in the path of the hearse as it passed with a police escort, while at the cemetery Colombia flags were waved by many of the 15,000 present to see Escobar's coffin lowered into the ground.

The funeral of Andrés Escobar in Medellín. Photograph: Sipa Press/Rex

Twenty years on, Andrés Escobar remains known around the world as the tragic Colombian footballer who was brutally "killed for scoring an own goal". It's a rather simplistic conclusion which his former manager feels does events of the time little justice. "Our society believed that soccer killed Andrés," Francisco Maturana has since opined, going on to suggest that in fact "Andrés was a soccer player killed by society."

Life doesn't end here, wrote Escobar in what turned out to be his valedictory address to the people of Colombia. Instead, it ended somewhere else just a few days later. Violently and senselessly in the seedy confines of a Medellín night club car park.