At the time he was considered one of the calls to guide the Colombia team with the 10 on the back. From a young age he showed conditions to become a great footballer. His father, Don Abatuel Chitiva, was a very prominent cyclist in the country, during the early 1970s. He instilled in her early on a passion for sports. From a very young age he started training in football and when he entered university, while studying business administration, he had his first flirtations with professional football.
At that time he was part of the inferiors of Millonarios and in 1999 he was promoted to the first team, at the request of Jorge Luis Pinto, who led the team at that time. Chitiva made her professional debut on June 13 of that year. In his second match, on August 29, he scored his first goal, just against Atlético Nacional, at Atanasio Girardot Stadium, and against who would be one of his greatest teammates and friends in the future, Miguel Calero.
The young player consolidated himself as one of the key players of the 2000 campaign, in which Millonarios managed to enter the final stages of the league and win the runner-up of the Merconorte Cup. With the blues, Chitiva scored 8 goals in 62 games. His good performances attracted the attention of international football and the Pachuca club signed him in 2001, on the recommendation of Calero himself. With the Mexicans, the former Millonarios player would win four league titles, three Concacaf cups and a South American Cup, he would also become one of the club's historic scorers, scoring 45 times.
In 2002 he went on loan to the Monarcas Morelia club and with them he would play in that year's Copa Libertadores, although he only played three games with that shirt. He then wore the colors of Cruz Azul, in 2003, but he would not be able to adapt either. Four games and no goal. He returned to Pachuca and stayed until 2008, at which point he will play for the Indios club and then he is hired by América, that team of Salvador Cabañas and Ramón Díaz that a year earlier would beat Millonarios in the semifinals of the South American in 2007.
With America he would be for three years, scoring just two goals in five games. In 2010 he was loaned to Atlas Guadalajara, where he scored two goals in seven games. At the end of that year he would sign with Red Sharks, a team from Veracruz. He would play 13 games and then rejoin Pachuca for a second stage with the club. However, he had been talking to the managers of Millonarios to strengthen the team at the beginning of 2012, he even arrived in Bogotá to formalize the agreement, but it was not finalized as the player had not been able to recover 100% from an eight-month injury and decided not to play anymore. He ended his career and would resume his studies. He graduated from the Physical Education program at the University of Football and Sports Sciences.
Andrés Chitiva was, at the time, one of the most popular figures in Mexican football and one of the most loved players by Pachuca fans. He has both Mexican and Colombian nationalities. He could have been dressed in Mexico's shirt, but he chose the one from Colombia. He wore the coffee growers' shirt for the first time in 2000, playing for the under-20 team. In that year he participated in the Toulon Esperanzas Tournament, where the Colombians would win the title after beating Portugal. With the senior team he played the Concacaf Gold Cup, in that same year, on the call of DT Luis Augusto García, who knew him very well since his time in the albiazul team. On that occasion, the Colombia team reached the final of the tournament, but they would be defeated by Canada. In 2004, he played a single match of the 2006 World Cup qualifiers in Germany and would not be called up again until 2007, for the qualifiers for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. He would participate in 5 matches and score 1 goal. Then Jorge Luis Pinto, in charge of the tricolor team, would call him again in 2008 and that would be his last time with the national team. In total, he played 12 games and scored 2 goals.
Today, Chitiva lives in Mexico and is part of the steering committee of Pachuca, where he serves as director of the team's scouting department. He never fulfilled his dream of playing in Europe, even though it sounded to reinforce several teams. He was born in Bogotá, but remained Mexican. His relationship with the Aztec country is more than endearing.
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