Rene 'el Loco' Higuita

What is it they say about having to be mad to be a goalkeeper? Rainbow Nelson meets, René Higuita, the maddest of the lot.

Known simply by his friends as “El Loco” or the “Crazy One”, it pays to turn up at René Higuita’s place in Medellin, Colombia well armed.
High up in the hills that flank Medellin, for years the murder capital of the western hemisphere, an Uzi isn’t needed, a bottle of Johnny Walker, preferably Blue Label, will more than suffice.
Higuita had not been up long when we arrive, shortly after lunchtime, but the feline reflexes that have been his trademark for the last twenty years were as fresh as ever. Instinctively he reaches out for the liquid ‘Aguinaldito’ (little Christmas bonus) he had requested and in less than a minute we are drinking scotch on the rocks with René Higuita, the legendary creator of the Scorpion Kick.
He is in apologetic mood, the previous night he had fallen asleep on a bench at one of his regular haunts and is clearly feeling slightly worse for wear. Crashing out down the pub “doesn’t normally happen,” he explains, but over the past few days he has been feeling the pressure.
In less than four days he is due to go under the knife as part of a commitment to transform himself from lovable rogue with a mullet to ‘Man at C&A’ as part of the reality show, Extreme Makeover.
He is scared. “Anything that is unknown is scary”, but for $30,000 of surgery and another $30,000 in the bank, René Higuita is ready to do almost anything if the price is right. Even to part with the famous soul-glo perm, central to his image as the world’s most unorthodox goalkeeper for more than 20 years.
In an era where he battled it out with Jose Luis Chilavert, Jorge Campos and Bruce Grobelaar for the mantle of world’s craziest keeper, it was the mullet and his out of goal/off-pitch antics that placed him one step ahead of the rest. Higuita is much more than a footballer. His character, and he has plenty, has been shaped by a tumultuous career, with all the highs and lows of a weekend on the devil’s dandruff with…. well, Rene Higuita.
Not recognised by his father, as a small child he was brought up by his mother in one of the slums of Medellin at a time when the most powerful criminal organisation in history, Pablo Escobar’s Medellin Cartel was making mincemeat of the city’s youth.
By the time he was 24, he had become a legend in South American football rising from his humble origins to the pinnacle of his playing career in May 1989, stopping four penalties and scoring one to win the Latin version of the Champions’ League for his team, Atlético Nacional.
“They wanted me to be president,” he recalls of his glorious night against Paraguayan league champions, Olimpia.
The following year, he took to the world stage for the first time at Italia 1990, the most successful World Cup campaign in Colombian history.
Unfortunately but somewhat understandably, in the world capital of cocaine production, the highs are invariably followed by the lows. In Medellin’s culture of cocaine-fuelled violence people are regularly brought down to earth with a thud. If they are lucky they get back up again.
Higuita’s bubble burst when Cameroon striker Roger Milla robbed him of the ball as he tried to round the striker on the half way line.
The second goal sent the team home, a 2-1 defeat robbing them of the prospect of a mouth-watering meeting with England in the quarterfinals. Higuita took the stick, as he always does, paying little attention to his critics.
“When you are losing you have to say either we try and get a draw or we might as well lose 5-0.” It is this attitude that exemplifies the way he redefined the goalkeeper’s role in the team.
A striker up to the age of 12, from an early age he rejected the defensive approach of other goalkeepers regularly roaming out of his area to act as the sweeper. Always on the attack his tactical contribution was to allow his teams to push forward creating a string of dynamic, exciting teams to watch.
While his football bubble may have burst in 1990, it took a couple of years for the rest of his life to feel the brunt. It was his off-the-pitch antics that taught him how easy it is to go from hero to villain.
After succeeding in playing his way out of the ghetto he found himself surrounded by others who had taken a very different, more violent route to stardom.
Powerful drugs barons such as Pablo Escobar looked upon footballers as modern-day monarchs might their courtiers, lavishing them with luxurious gifts if they won, executing them if they failed.
Half of the Atlético Nacional team that won the Copa Libertadores with Higuita have since become victims of the violence that has scarred the country.
Most famously a bodyguard pumped 12 bullets into Atletico Nacional starlet, Andres Escobar after he scored an own goal in USA 1994.
Higuita nonetheless became friends when Pablo Escobar made him and the rest of the Colombia team, an offer they couldn’t refuse. They were invited to visit the drugs baron’s private zoo and ranch, Napoles.
The friendship was affirmed a year later, when Higuita and his club side accepted another invitation to play a friendly against the Medellin Cartel in Escobar’s private prison.
In another memorable penalty shoot-out Higuita’s penalty saving skills were notably absent. “What can I say? He scored,” says Higuita when prompted on whether he might have been tempted to dive out of the way of the deciding penalty scored by Escobar.
His friendship with a man with a US$5m price-tag on his head came back to haunt him in June 1993 when Higuita was imprisoned for helping to secure the release of a kidnapped daughter of a friend.
“I have never spoken clearly about this for fear, but now I have no fear. I don’t know whether it’s the whisky,” he says with a nervous grin on his face, “but instead of being the hero I ended up being the villain”.
He paid dearly for his friendship with Escobar serving nine months in prison and losing his place in the team for USA 1994.
“One of the guerrilla leaders said to me [on my first day inside] ‘The problem is that you are a friend of Pablo’. I had nothing to do with it. Pablo had nothing to do with it. They say to me you are facing five to seven years but give us Pablo and we will let you off. Look I am innocent but I am definitely not a toad [grass]. Even if I knew where he was I wouldn’t tell you.”
The charges were finally dropped after he went on hunger strike to protest his innocence.
Philosophical as always, jail at least taught him to live with two warring factions, the left-wing guerrillas and the right-wing paramilitaries, battling it out for control of the drugs trade inside and outside the jails.
Trading on his charm and common touch, Higuita has always been able to cross the boundaries that have divided Colombian society.
“I can deal with the guerrillas, thank god. I am not scared of going to the mountains if you say ‘let’s go and speak to the guerrillas’ then let’s go and you will see how they treat you if you’re hanging out with me,” he says. “It’s the same with the paramilitaries you will see how they treat you if you are with me but it would be different if you went with the police.”
The time inside also gave him plenty of time to work on the move that has become the thing that still defines him today, the Scorpion Kick.
A hazy life may have left him unclear on the name of the spice boy that drifted in the shot at Wembley (it was Jamie Redknapp), but he remembers clearly the role the linesman played in the spectacular flip that turned him into a legend.
“I knew he was offside,” laughs Higuita. “The linesman made it possible because he put his flag up. If he hadn’t I wouldn’t have done it. When I did the Scorpion, the linesman dropped his flag, as if to say, this beauty can’t be offside and that was how it was. It was something amazing.”
It wasn’t the first time, the move was inspired during the filming of a fruit drink commercial, but the fee he charges to perform the Scorpion, tripled after he pulled it off at the mythical home of football.
Like his close friend, Diego Maradona, his playing career has been curtailed due to the internal battle with substance abuse. He was banned in November last year after failing a drug’s test while playing for Ecuadorean team, Aucas.
“The problem is that everyone has their weaknesses, their moments, their parties… and well they caught me with their anti-doping. It had been six months [since the party]. The results were there all I can say that I was there doing what I like to do,” he says.
Sincere almost to a fault with those around him, he does not fit the typical profile of the basketcases climbing over themselves for an Extreme Makeover.
His decision to do it has been questioned by many who argue that his new look has stripped him of his imitable charm.
Whereas previously, every line, every freckle and the smoke-stained teeth of his old face screamed of a life lived to the full. Of substance abuse and late nights with Pablo Escobar, the new face, equipped with silicon chin, streamline lips, billion-dollar grin and botox-blitzed laughter lines, sadly fails the Ronseal test. It may be less weathered but it no longer does exactly what it says on the tin.
But René has little time for anyone that suggests that the ironing out of a few wrinkles and a nip and a tuck here and there have done anything to change the man underneath.
“I keep doing my thing and I have kept my identity,” he says. “Even though a lot of people talk [shit] about me I have never lost my identity.” Speaking shortly after the operation he says
Yes. Before I loved [looking at myself in the mirror] and now, well, a little bit more.”
The truth is that I feel good, there was a change, and I more than anyone should feel that. They injected me and I have a lot to show for the surgery, so there is something but with this something I feel good. The truth is that before I felt 100% and now I feel 200%."
Do you think that you are now the Colombian David Beckham?
"No, for my character and trademark I am not a physically beautiful person. What they have done is made a few changes that have made me look younger and have left me looking a little bit better. yes. But I have to recognise that in
the area of men there are some that are more handsome. In the case of David Beckham he looks good and you have to recognise that I can never get there but I have other positive aspects that make me feel good."
His long-suffering wife, Magnolia, will testify to the fact that the Extreme Makeover has had little impact on the real René, especially his nocturnal activities.
No doubt the makeover will act as a new start for a man who has already had his fair share. He himself remains an optimist. After failing his drugs test last November he quoted Aristotle in an apologetic letter to the fans, his family and the Aucas chairman. ‘Hope is the dream of a waking man,’ he said. Unfortunately in René Higuita’s case you might say he has two hopes: Bob Hope and Johnny Walker.

*This article was written for Zoo (August 2006)