It was at the 1989 Intercontinental Cup. I wasn't born, but when you grow up among football players, you learn about these things. My dad is a fan of Millonarios and so is my uncle, just like me, but when they told me about that 'Blue Ballet' that beat Real Madrid in Colombia and in Spain, none of them wanted to stop talking about that Atlético Nacional that won the Copa Libertadores of that time and went to play against the biggest teams of the moment. They were the same players who made up the Colombia team who in the World Cup in Italy 90 gave the country so much joy, despite the fact that their participation in the tournament lasted so little.
On that occasion, the Colombian team was going to play as the defending champion of America and they had to face AC Milan, the fabulous Italian team. Just going over the names makes you want to go back in time to be able to watch them play. In the team led by Maturana, the starters were Higuita, Escobar, Cassiani, Herrera, Arango; Perez, Gómez, Alvarez; García, Arboleda and Tréllez. Among the alternates was a certain Albeiro Usuriaga, who at that time was just 23 years old.
And the Milan team, which was a tromba, was led by Arrigo Sacchi. The starters in that match were Galli, Baresi, Costacurta, Maldini, Tassotti; Rijkaard, Ancelotti, Fuser, Donadoni; Masaro and van Basten. The longest-running of that team was the goalkeeper and the current Real Madrid coach, Carlo Ancelotti, was already one of the leading players of the Italian national team. It was a great team. They came from being champions of the Champions League. Van Basten was flying around those years. Who wouldn't have wanted to see him play.
Nacional and Milan met on December 17 of that year 89, at the National Stadium in Tokyo, in Japan, and that was for the Colombians as a preview of what would be the World Cup next year, because of the excitement and frenzy that both episodes produced. I have seen videos of that meeting and I can also feel that feeling and, well, seeing him enter Usuriaga the second half makes my skin stand up. The match seemed to be pre-sentenced, but the Colombians were very good during the 90 minutes. If the game was so intense that it had to be defined in extra time, with very little to go to penalties.
In that last play, which is so agonizing for both the Italian and Colombian teams, Evani takes the ball to kick a free kick at minute 119 ′ and ends up keeping it inside the net after a very good execution. If that previous foul hadn't happened, until suddenly Nacional won the title from 12 steps, because Higuita was very good with penalties. Milan won the cup, twenty years after winning their first intercontinental title, but the Colombians left such good feelings that they became the best-known South American team in the world, after Boca Juniors. In that meeting, in addition, one of the purdolagas defenders impressed with his good game, Andrés Escobar, and Milan began to follow him closely. They wanted to hire him to replace Baresi, after the United States World Cup, in 1994, but we already know how that ended.
Of that Colombian team that played in Japan, several footballers went to play in other, more competitive leagues. Usuriaga came to Independiente, for example, and ended up being an idol. The other players were the basis of that glorious team that for almost the entire 1990s managed to revolutionize the way football is played in the country. December marks the anniversary, but from Infobae we remember the match this month, before the death of Freddy Rincón, which he shared with several of these players and triumphed with them. It is, in a way, the anticipation of the end of an entire era that excited a country engulfed in violence.
I wish football could always be more than war.
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