When Washington ‘Pulpa’ Etchamendi, a Uruguayan coach who died of a heart attack in the middle of a match at the Pascual Guerrero stadium, took over as coach of Deportivo Cali in 1976, the president at the time, Alex Gorayeb, introduced him, one by one, to the players that made up the squad.
In that row of footballers were together, one next to the other, Óscar ‘Moño’ Muñoz, a winger with the soul of number 10, and Miguel Escobar, a central defender. Both, with a tendency to fatness.
Etchamendi was going to pass straight, without greeting them, believing that they were auxiliaries. Gorayeb stopped him and said: “Professor, these are players.” The Uruguayan replied. “Players? These are fighters!”
But Escobar was not one of those fighting defenders. What’s more, he never needed to kick to gain respect. He was a smart, handsome player who knew how to play the ball. This Tuesday, the central defender died in his hometown, Buga, at the age of 77.
He had an impressive intuition to anticipate the forwards. He was brilliant at making the sliding tackle, a move patented to his name: he would dive to the ground, legs outstretched, stealing the ball from his opponents. That technique, for example, was applied, much later and with the same consequences, by another great Colombian central defender, Mario Alberto Yepes. But Escobar always came out playing.
Escobar made his professional debut at Deportivo Pereira in 1966. He arrived there after playing for teams like Independiente de Buga, Boca Juniors and Juventud de Buga. But it was in the Valle Selection, in the 1964 national championship that was played in Cúcuta, where he began to shine. There the Paraguayan coach César López Fretes saw him and took him to Pereira.
He always wanted to be a central defender, more exactly, like Francisco ‘Cobo’ Zuluaga, the only Colombian who was a starter in the Millonarios at the time of El Dorado and who was also in the World Cup in Chile, in 1962. And in that position he reached the owner of Pereira, in 1965, to replace the owner, who had been injured. They were never able to remove him from the formation again.
In 1967 he arrived at Deportivo Cali, which paid Pereira 50,000 pesos for his transfer. In his first game, he faced Napoli from Italy, which featured the Argentine Enrique Omar Sívori and the Italian-Brazilian José Altafini. He didn’t let them get together and when they were close, he didn’t let them touch the ball. And so he passed with many of the forwards of the time in Colombian soccer.
That year began a brilliant cycle for Cali, which obtained its first five stars between that year and 1974. Miguel was the starter in all of them. At first, he teamed up with another brilliant central defender, Óscar López, and then he had Henry Caicedo by his side.
He was part of one of the milestones of the Colombian National Team, the 1975 Copa América runner-up (of course, as a starter), alongside the tough José ‘Boricua’ Zárate. Of course, he does not have a large number of matches with the National Team: at that time, friendlies were rare and the World Cup qualifiers were not all against all, but were triangular that were resolved in less than a month. But he managed to play 18 games dressed in sapote, the color of the National Team’s jersey in the 70s.
Escobar was also in the first final that a Colombian team played in the Copa Libertadores, that of 1978, which they lost against Boca Juniors after having made a brilliant triangular semifinal, in which they passed over Alianza Lima and Cerro Porteño, with Carlos Salvador Bilardo as technician.
Formation of Deportivo Cali in the 1978 Copa Libertadores final.
“Bilardo was clear. He told us that we had to take advantage of two or three mistakes that the rival was going to make. We entered the field and the rival made those two or three mistakes. And that’s how we won,” Escobar said in an interview in 1998.
In 1980 he went to Santa Fe, after setting the record for the greatest number of games played with the Deportivo Cali jersey: 537. He arrived in Bogotá at the age of 35 and it was there that he decided to retire: in training, Orlando ‘Batato’ Castro, who at that time was playing as a striker, left him watered in a pique and Miguel said that he was not going to allow himself to leave the fields showing pity.
The bugueño, Miguel Antonio Escobar, played for 13 years at Deportivo Cali.
Juan Bautista Díaz / EL TIEMPO
Despite everything he gave to soccer, Escobar went through hardships in his last years of life. Throat cancer forced him to use a laryngophone to be able to speak. He sued Deportivo Cali and only in 2019 was he able to start receiving his pension. This Tuesday, his life went out.
CV
Miguel Escobar
Born: April 18, 1945
Teams: Deportivo Pereira (1965-66), Deportivo Cali (1967-79) and Santa Fe (1980-81).
Games played: 649
Goals: 8
Jose Orlando Ascension
sports deputy editor
@josasc
Taken from the book ‘Play, boys!, by the same author (Intermedio Editores, 2018)
