Pablo Escobar’s 9 Bullets that Halted Colombian Football
If you browse through the list of Primera A winners in Colombia and take a look at the champions for each year, you’ll spot something strange in 1989. Instead of a team’s name, there’s just a long blank space. No one won the league that year. Naturally, you’d wonder why. And if you know even a little about Colombia and what was going on in the country at that time, you might already have a few guesses. But let’s break it down.
The structure of the Colombian league in 1989 was as chaotic as it gets—just like you’d expect from that era. And yes, dear reader, we’re going to dissect it for you, step by step, because there’s a twisted kind of joy in doing so. The league featured 15 teams—a peculiar number to European fans, but standard for Colombia for four straight seasons, with each year introducing slight tweaks to the format. In 1989, the league started with (brace yourself) three distinct phases. The first was the Apertura—a straightforward round-robin tournament with 14 matches. Simple enough, right? The second? That was the Copa Colombia. “Wait, a cup competition? In the middle of a league season?” you ask. Yup, exactly that.
Independiente Santa Fe took the Cup (which was also part of the league)
The Colombian Cup has a history as strange as its format. It kicked off in the 1950s, stopped, made a one-season cameo in 1981 and then popped back up in 1989—only to disappear again until 2008. In 1989, it was integrated as the second phase of the national league. Some recognize the winners as cup champions, while others argue that because it was part of the league, it doesn’t count as a proper cup. Naturally, this caused a bit of confusion. The tournament followed a triangular format (yes, triangular) with teams split into three groups of five based on geography. Each group played a double round-robin, home and away. That’s where things got tricky.
And by tricky, I mean absurd. The format was the most ridiculous thing in world football. If a team won both games against another team, they earned 3 points. If they won one and drew the other, they got 2 points. If there was a win and a loss, the team with the better goal difference took 1 point. And if the goal difference was the same, the two teams had to duke it out in a penalty shootout for that single point. After all that, the top two teams from each group and the two best third-placed teams advanced to a final round of eight, where the competition finally resembled a normal knockout cup with quarterfinals, semis and a final. As for how this all tied back to the league? Hold on to your sanity. Only the points from the group stage counted towards the league.
For example, Millonarios, despite being knocked out in the quarterfinals of the cup, still banked 10 points for the league, the amount they racked up in the group stage. Meanwhile, Unión Magdalena, who made it to the cup final, only earned 5 league points from their group games. Now take a deep breath, grab some painkillers and let’s move on.
Try to explain how a team with 4 Wins, 1 Draw and 3 Losses finished 3rd in their group with… 3 Points
The third phase of the championship was straightforward (or as straightforward as Colombian football gets). It was an all-against-all Finalización with 14 matches. Then, after tallying up the points from all three phases, you might think we’d crown the champion… but hold your horses. Of course, it’s not over yet. The league had one more twist: bonus points. Yep, you heard that right. During those years, teams were awarded bonus points based on their positions in the previous phases, sort of like an enhanced proportional system. And because we’re not dealing with normal people, these bonuses included decimals.
The first-place team earned a 1-point bonus, second got 0.75, third got 0.50 and fourth 0.25. I swear, I’m not making this up.
The League Table with decimals – for the non-believers
As mentioned before, 1989 was never destined to have a proper ending. Despite all the insanity that came from those first three phases, we weren’t even close to wrapping up the league. In fact, the chaos continued in full force. Enter the Cuadrangular Inicial: In the first group, we had the teams ranked 1-4 from the overall standings of the first three phases. In the second group, we had teams 5-8. The top two from Group 1 moved directly to the Final Four. Meanwhile, the bottom two from Group 1 had to battle it out in a brand new playoff group (yes, another one) with the top two from Group 2. From this playoff, two teams would advance to the completely-not-joking final group stage (Cuadrangular Final), where four teams would compete to decide the ultimate champion. Simple, right? Oh, but wait…
October 26, 1989. Fast forward to this playoff madness. Atlético Junior and Millonarios had already secured their spots in the final phase from Group 1. They were waiting for the results of the playoff group, which featured Unión Magdalena, América de Cali, Atlético Nacional and Independiente Medellín. Two of these teams would move on to the final showdown for the coveted title.
Then came the fateful game at Pascual Guerrero Stadium in Cali: América de Cali versus Independiente Medellín. It wasn’t just about football anymore—this match carried the heavy weight of Colombia’s two most powerful drug cartels. The Cali Cartel supported América, while “El Patrón” Pablo Escobar, in his “benevolence,” regularly funneled money into both Medellín teams.
América took the lead 3-2, but two minutes before the final whistle, Medellín equalized 3-3 with a spectacular bicycle kick. The joy was short-lived, though, as the 37-year-old referee, Álvaro Ortega, disallowed the goal for dangerous play. América held on to win 3-2. As you can imagine, Medellín’s players, fans and everyone involved were furious. The decision, though, was considered correct by many referees at the time, but that did little to ease the tensions.
The referee that paid with blood for one whistle
The fear surrounding referee Álvaro Ortega was palpable. Just one year earlier, another referee, Armando Hoyos, had been kidnapped in Medellín by masked men claiming to represent “six wronged teams.” Their message was clear: América de Cali was getting too much favoritism and they wanted it to stop. Hoyos was eventually released unharmed and was a linesman in the 1990 World Cup final. However, the fear lingered. The kidnappers had sent a chilling message: “The next referee to make a wrong call will be erased.”
Fate would have it that Ortega was appointed as a linesman for the 2nd match between América de Cali and Independiente Medellín on November 15th. The Colombian Football Federation assured him that the match was meaningless in terms of points and thus, harmless. But some of Ortega’s colleagues urged him not to go to Medellín. Ortega, however, ignored them. When he arrived at his hotel, he received a threatening phone call. Jesús Díaz, one of Colombia’s top referees at the time and Ortega’s friend, noticed his discomfort and asked what was wrong. Ortega kept the contents of the phone call to himself, and they went ahead with officiating the match, which ended in an unremarkable 0-0 draw.
After the game, Ortega and Díaz left the stadium under police escort. But everything seemed calm, so Ortega told the police to drop them off a few meters from their hotel so they could grab a bite to eat. As they walked back, a car screeched to a stop near them. A hitman stepped out, told Díaz to step aside and shot Ortega in the leg as he tried to escape. Ortega collapsed, bleeding and muttered, “They got me,” to his friend.
The assassin, showing a twisted sense of intimacy, stood over Ortega, held him close and fired eight more bullets into his body, ensuring his death. Díaz, once he recovered from the shock, attempted to run after the gunman, but was stopped when the killer pointed his gun at him. “Relax, we only wanted him. Don’t make things difficult with the boss,” the gunman said coldly before driving away.
Díaz desperately tried to save his friend, but it was Medellín at night and no one wanted to stop for an injured man. A taxi driver refused to let them into his car, not wanting bloodstains inside. Finally, Díaz and a homeless man (who stole Ortega’s wallet in the process) managed to stop traffic and get him into a car bound for the nearest clinic. But the doctors had no good news—Ortega was already dead.
Popeye. He died three years ago, aged 57, in prison from cancer.
There were no arrests after the murder and the prosecutor of Medellín admitted that the investigation went nowhere. Years passed and eventually, the case was archived. Twenty years after the cowardly assassination, John Jairo Velásquez, known by his nickname “Popeye,” one of Escobar’s most infamous sicarios (the inspiration behind the Velasco character in the Narcos series), confessed from prison. Velásquez, who was serving time for 257 murders he personally committed and for involvement in around 3.000 homicides and a terrorist attack, revealed that he had watched that fateful 3-2 match alongside Escobar. The notorious drug lord had placed a large bet on the game. When the equalizer was disallowed, Escobar was enraged. “That was a robbery,” he reportedly said, clearly a connoisseur in the matter of theft. He gave the order: Ortega had to die.
“If he had told me about that phone call at the hotel, he would still be alive. I would have taken him and we would have left immediately,” Díaz lamented. Years later, Díaz continued to visit his friend’s grave, laying flowers and replaying the moments in his mind, always wondering if there was something else he could have done. He quit refereeing not long after, even though he had officiated World Cup matches in Mexico just a few years prior.
Newspaper headline: “The Championship Was Cancelled”
That season 318 matches were played and a few more were scheduled. But in the end the madness of groups, cups, bizarre scoring systems, decimals and playoffs led nowhere. The championship was stained with the blood of a referee killed by the orders of a criminal—all for one whistle. On November 22 the Colombian Football Federation officially announced the cancellation of the league. It remains the only year in the country’s history where no champion was crowned. The cartels that were destroying the country also destroyed its football.
