Movie Review: The Two Escobars

Continuing with the soccer trend in my life lately, Kelsi and I watched an interesting movie last weekend entitled The Two Escobars.

This movie is part of the ESPN 30 for 30 series. The 30 movies are part of a documentary series about unique stories in sports history from 1979 to 2009. In essence, they were created for ESPN to celebrate its thirtieth anniversary of existence. However, the unique thing is that ESPN didn't just choose the top 30 stories from those years. Instead they chose the stories that people didn't always hear about, or that people didn't always know every detail of. They cover everything from rugby in post-apartheid South Africa to Michael Jordan's short minor-league baseball career.

You can view the trailer for the series here:

The movie we watched is about the rise of the Colombian national soccer team as they worked their way towards the World Cup in 1994 and how this coincided with the rise of well know narco-king, Pablo Escobar. Led by captain, Andres Escobar, the Colombian national team left for the 1994 World Cup as the favorites and were expected to win the whole thing. After losing their first game, the team also lost the second game when Andres accidentally scored in Colombia's own goal. For this, he was murdered in Medellin only weeks later, not a full year after the death of Pablo in the same town.

The most interesting part of the movie was the extensive discussion about something known as "Narco-soccer", or basically the idea that Colombia's national team had many more direct ties to Pablo Escobar than one might expect. The movie definitely makes you think about the relationships between businesses (legal or not) and sports, as well as the terrifying history that is still very much a part of Colombia's present.

Whether you are into sports or soccer this movie is definitely engaging to watch and I highly recommend it.

Here is an exert from the movie:

Futbol on the Brain

After watching the Copa del Rey during the "brewery tour" in Medellin, it seems as though soccer is everywhere in Colombia. I mean, more that it usually is given how much Colombians love them some soccer.

Yesterday, my students came into class for the last period of the day begging me to let us watch some of the semi-finals game for the soccer league in Spain, between Real Madrid and Barcelona. I said if we got through the lesson and they wanted to choose to do the homework at home rather than during work time, then maybe we could watch it. Sure enough, by 2:15 we were done with the lesson and so I said we could watch it. Within two minutes two of the boys in my class had the feed from the internet and we were watching the game live.

Now...when I say we were watching the game live, I mean my desktop computer screen was turned around to face the class and about 17 of the 20 students were crowded around the floor below. The coolest thing about watching soccer with students is seeing how into they are! And the girls just as much as the boys, which is cool since I am a pretty sports loving girl myself. :) They spent the next 15 minutes acting like soccer players watching other soccer players, so basically being overly dramatic about everything that happened on the field. Absolutely hysterical to observe.

I wish I had a picture of them all crowded around, but alas you will have to picture 17 eighth graders crowded together.

VIP, Yeah You Know Me

Airline delays...or actually just delays in general are the norm in Colombia. When I travel here I pretty much assume we will be delayed for some ridiculous reason, and if everything does go according to plan I usually spend the rest of the day marveling at our good fortune. (Like when we found a bus on the Medellin-Bogota highway just as we walked out the main gate at Rio Claro!!)

When we arrived to the airport last Saturday afternoon I was not at all surprised to learn that our flight to Bogota was delayed and we would therefore be unable to make our connecting flight to Medellin. Rudely dismissed by the lady working the Avianca check-in counter, we headed over to a somewhat more helpful woman who changed our plane tickets for the later flights and sent us on the way. Still annoyed, we waited in the Cali airport for a later flight. At the last minute (literally we were the last people to get on the plane), Avianca did put us on an earlier flight to Medellin. HOORAY!

Now...could we change tickets again and get back on our original flight to Medellin?

Of course not.

When they told me this at the Bogota office I got irritated and explained that this was our original flight. How was it possibly full when we had seats on it a mere two hours ago?!?!?! Well the lady wasn't budging, but did we want to wait in the executive lounge for the later flight? I told her we weren't "Executive Class", so that wasn't really helpful.

Not until she pointed out our seats to us did we realize that somehow our Bogota-Medellin tickets had changed into VIP tickets. Still believing it was too good to be true we hesitantly approached the Avianca VIP lounge in Bogota, expecting to be turned away as frauds, but in we went!!

Let me just tell you right now....the VIP lounge is a magical place. Literally magical. They have free WIFI (albeit a sketchy signal), free mini sandwiches, free fruit kabobs, free coffee, free tea, free water, clean bathrooms, swanky couches annnnnnnnnd oh yes, a bar. See? M-A-G-I-C-A-L.

Please note the comfortable seating, mini sandwiches, fruit kabobs and drinks.

Open self-serve bar? Seriously?

Obviously I had to zoom in to take this photo since Kelsi's seat was located so far away from mine.

We spent the next three hours in a land of bliss feeling like outsiders looking into the life of the Rich and Famous of Colombia...and eating lots of fruit, sandwiches and making mixed drinks using juice boxes. Excellent way to kill three airport hours before boarding a plane to sit comfortably in roomy seats...for a 45 minute flight.