\n<\/p>\n
Raised by his grandmother from a young age following the death of his mother, Higuita began playing football on the streets of Medellin. He started off as a forward, but his trajectory changed during a local tournament when his school team’s goalkeeper suffered an injury. Higuita was picked to stand between the posts, and his team won the competition. From then on, he was a goalkeeper, but the striker’s instinct never left him.<\/span><\/p>\n He wasn’t a first-team regular in his brief spell at Millonarios, his first professional club, but the few appearances he made convinced Atletico Nacional to snap him up in 1986. <\/span><\/p>\n Signed as a backup keeper, his debut came as a surprise even to him. Higuita was sitting on the bench as the second half of a match kicked off, but he was lured away by the smell of fried pork. While he was chowing down, Atletico’s goalkeeper had been sent off and a manhunt for the reserve was underway.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI heard the stadium announcer say: ‘Mr. Jose Rene Higuita is requested on the Atletico Nacional bench,\u2019\u201d he later recalled. \u201cI ran out, and [Anibal] Ruiz, the coach, said: ‘Hey, Higuita, you son of a bitch! What’s wrong with you? Get on the field!’<\/span><\/p>\n “The worst part is that I was a standout player in those 30-odd minutes I played, and then Carrabs went to Junior de Barranquilla and I became the starter.”<\/span><\/p>\n At 5’9″, he was hardly a physically imposing goalkeeper, but Higuita was as bold and bombastic as the dark curling mane that draped down his shoulders suggested. He mauled everything that came near his box: sprinting out to challenge strikers head-on; throwing himself into a mix of attackers and defenders to catch crosses; and pouncing across his line to slap shots away.<\/span><\/p>\n Higuita would come running out of his box, steal the ball, dribble past an opponent or two, pass to a team-mate and keep running. Soon, he was up at the opponent’s box alongside Atletico’s forwards and being chased down by defenders. <\/span><\/p>\n His ability to save penalties was impressive enough, but nobody had ever seen a goalkeeper regularly score them before. He was also firing in free kicks. <\/span><\/p>\n Before long, stadiums filled up with people wanting to see the man dubbed ‘El Loco’. “People thought he was cocky because of how he played. No, that’s how he was,” Valderrama said.<\/span><\/p>\n The pinnacle for Atletico Nacional came in 1989 when they broke Colombia’s Copa Libertadores final curse. Two years on from America de Cali’s third consecutive defeat in the continental decider, it looked like the jinx would continue as Atletico lost the first-leg 2-0 to Olimpia in Paraguay. They struck twice in the second half of the return in Bogota to take it to a penalty shootout. <\/span><\/p>\n What followed solidified Higuita’s status as a legend.<\/span><\/p>\n He saved Olimpia’s first penalty, and it was 3-3 by the time the goalkeeper stepped up to take Atletico\u2019s fifth. <\/span><\/p>\n He buried it, but Olimpia scored and it went to sudden death. <\/span><\/p>\n Again, Higuita saved the first, but team-mate Felipe Perez missed his. <\/span><\/p>\n Higuita saved the next one, but Gildardo Gomez failed to bury his, too. <\/span><\/p>\n Higuita saved the one after that, but defender Luis Carlos Perea sent his over the bar.<\/span><\/p>\n Finally, Leonel Alvarez scored to win the shootout 5-4 and Atletico became the first ever Colombian side to win the competition.<\/span><\/p>\n Later that year, Higuita and Co. faced European champions AC Milan in the Intercontinental Cup. The South Americans matched the likes of Marco van Basten, Carlo Ancelotti, Frank Rijkaard, Paolo Maldini and Franco Baresi until the 118th minute, when Alberico Evani broke the deadlock.<\/span><\/p>\n It was a great leap forward for the nation’s game, and another would come a year later. Higuita was one of nine Atletico players named in the Colombia squad for the World Cup, with Francisco Maturana coaching club and country simultaneously.<\/span><\/p>\n It was Colombia’s second appearance at the tournament and the first time they had qualified in 28 years. Flying high after starting with a 2-0 win against UAE, they came crashing down as a 1-0 defeat to Yugoslavia left them needing a point against West Germany. Higuita did not shy away on the grand stage, he was his typical reckless self despite being up against European giants and the South Americans pulled off a late equaliser.<\/span><\/p>\n In the next round, against Cameroon, the danger of Higuita’s irrepressibly impulsive style was exposed. It was an exciting last-16 tie, but both goalkeepers were unbeatable until the second half of extra-time when Roger Milla fired past Higuita and went dancing towards the corner flag. Two minutes later, Higuita had the ball at his feet halfway up Colombia’s half and passed to Atletico co-star Carlos Perea, who miscued his attempt to play it back. With Milla bearing down, Higuita tried to recover but was caught and stumbled, eventually throwing himself at Milla’s heels in a vain attempt to stop him from rolling the ball into the net.<\/span><\/p>\n It was an embarrassing end to the campaign, but Maturana and his men received an incredible welcome when they landed back home.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Raised by his grandmother from a young age following the death of his mother, Higuita…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25572,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25571\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}