Three decades ago a rule returned the goal to a petty football. Colombian goalkeeper René ‘El loco’ Higuita, famous for his outings with the ball at his feet, believes he has inspired this small revolution in the most popular sport in the world.
Just before the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games, Fifa regulated “the back pass”. Goalkeepers who subsequently receive a teammate’s service with their hands will be punished with an indirect free kick.
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Strongly criticized by the goalkeepers of the time, who barely used their feet to score goals, the measure sought to revive the show after the lackluster World Cup in Italy-1990, the lowest goal average in history (2.2).
The goalkeepers were the protagonists with their rigged practice of taking the ball with their hands to lose time.
With the norm, “Fifa put an end to something that was horrible, in the 1990 World Cup almost all the teams played backwards to give the ball to the goalkeeper,” historian Luciano Wernicke recalls in conversation with AFP.
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Goalkeepers like Argentina’s Sergio Goycochea, Costa Rica’s Luis Gabelo or Italy’s Walter Zenga, to mention a few examples, “had the ball in their hands for a long time,” adds Wernicke, the author of books on soccer curiosities.
Amidst the conservatism of the time, a goalkeeper with long curly hair and a multi-colored sweatshirt changed the paradigm. René Higuita played that World Cup with Colombia as a “sweeper goalkeeper”, who generated offensive play with his passes, and without fear of going out with the ball at his feet and dribbling to the middle of the field.
“El loco”, a prominent free kick and penalty kick collector, is now convinced that Fifa “was inspired” by his game to draft the rule.
The “Higuita Law”
From the arc of the Colombian team, Higuita was a sensation in that World Cup, although he made a mistake in the round of 16 that ultimately cost the team elimination.
In a failed dribble, he gave the ball to Cameroonian Roger Milla, who scored the double (2-1) with which he took the coffee growers out of the tournament.
Thanks to the so-called “Higuita Law” in Colombia, soccer “is now much faster, (there is) more mobility, every day the goalkeeper has to work a little more with his feet to contribute to the team,” says the Colombian to the AFP.
Today’s goalkeeping coach for Atlético Nacional de Medellín believes he was the person “who contributed to that change.”
“Soccer greats like Péle or Maradona” were “very good players, but they haven’t changed a rule in Fifa,” he says self-assuredly during a video call.
Although the historian Wernicke clarifies: “It is not that the norm is changed by Higuita, but by all the other archers who were not like Higuita.” The Colombian was “the only goalkeeper who did not speculate” with the loss of time, he adds.
It was very difficult to adapt
Higuita smiles mischievously when she remembers that during the first games with the norm, “some” of her “clueless” colleagues “returned the ball to them and caught it with their hands.”
Contrary to the exporter, who started football as a child as an outfield player and finished his career in 2008 with 43 goals, the goalkeepers were not familiar with the game outside their area.
Santiago Cañizarez, Spain’s starter at the 1992 Olympics, recently recalled the sensations in that first tournament where the instruction was applied:
“For us that was a surprise. […]. We weren’t used to it and didn’t know that it could ever be a part of our life,” he told Olympics.com.
Others like the legendary Barcelona goalkeeper Andoni Zubizarreta set their opposition. The law “limits the goalkeeper”, he complained in 1992, according to statements collected by El País.
Despite its few devotees, with the norm the annotations increased. The World Cup in the United States-1994, was the one with the highest goal average (2.7) since 1970.
“That is the best rule that has been changed in the last 40 years, it made football more dynamic,” says Wernicke.
Thirty years after the popular “Higuita Law”, Fifa is once again questioning the waste of time in a sport that is losing fans.
Higuita gives the go-ahead to experience new modifications in the regulation. “There is a lot of talk about taking real time [de juego] like in basketball and the idea is not a bad one”, says ‘El Loco’.
