England keeper's gaffe could have been so much worse

For the rest of his career - for the rest of his life - the barely soccer-literate bloviators have been promising, English goalkeeper Robert Green will be haunted by that cheap goal he surrendered to American Clint Dempsey in Saturday's first-round World Cup match.

Fine. Long may he live while, most likely, it is the so-called experts (and some overwrought fans) who will be haunted far more than Green. He has made mistakes before, he said nobly, and has been quite capable of carrying on. As Teddy Roosevelt once said, "The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming . . . who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

The hapless Green's flub, with the ball skipping off his big goalie gloves that inescapably evoked cartoon Goofy hands, wiped out England's 1-0 lead and its apparent victory (though it occured with still 50 minutes to play.) But here's a reference point to illustrate how ultimately inconsequential Green's error was:

The last time the U.S. benefitted from such a World Cup blooper was in 1994, when Colombian defender Andres Escobar accidentally redirected an American pass into his own goal, triggering a shocking 2-1 Yank upset. (Colombia had been a pre-tournament title favorite but wound up going home after the first round.) That, too, was nothing more than a man in the arena erring while striving valiantly.

Except, in Escobar's case, there was a real dark side, an historic backdrop of drug cartel money supporting Colombia's top pro teams and backing enormous bets on the national team in that World Cup. Ten days after his botched play, the 26-year-old Escobar, back home in Medellin, was murdered.

The unsettling details surrounding that '94 incident can be seen on "The Two Escobars," another in the dandy series of films commissioned by ESPN for its "30-for-30" programming, airing June 22, a real-life drama starkly different for the current English situation.

Should England fail to advance out of the World Cup's first round - not bloody likely - Green, 30, very well could get the Bill Buckner treatment, in terms of being long remembered for a high-profile gaffe. He currently is being pilloried by the wacky British tabloids ("Hand of Clod," "Shock and Draw") and by some commentators outraged by imperfection. (Baseball umpire Jim Joyce could identify.)

One London paper, accustomed to crying wolf, has posited that there is a romantic explanation for the costly error; that Green is "devastated" by his recent breakup with a girlfriend. As if there must be a culprit involved.

The Escobar fallout was far more complex and sinister, rooted in what became known around 1990 as "Narco-soccer." Pablo Escobar, no relation to Andres, was the drug baron known to launder drug money through the top pro soccer teams in Colombia. A passionate fan of the sport, Pablo cozied up to players, entertaining them at his lavish private villas.

Then there was the group called Lifutcol - for "Clean Football in Colombia" - which might have been seen as representative of innocent Colombians insisting the national team rid itself of players from the four domestic pro teams funded by drug money. Except that Lifutcol made its point by issuing death threats. In November of 1989, the league season had been canceled after a soccer referee was murdered when a final score apparently didn't satisfy massive bets riding on drug money.

Pablo Escobar himself wound up the victim of a gangland slaying prior to the 1994 World Cup. In the ESPN film, one of Pablo's hit men argues that Andres never would have been killed if soccer-loving Pablo had still been alive.

At the Rose Bowl on June 22, 1994, the Americans were scrambling desperately on defense against the nifty, lighting-quick Colombians, but were able to mount repeated counter attacks on long passes from the left flank by John Harkes (the current World Cup commentator for ESPN).

In the 35th minute of the scoreless game, Harkes sent another long ball to forward Ernie Stewart, streaking down the middle. And Andres Escobar, attempting to cut it off by sliding at it, feet first toward his own goal, inadvertently poked it past the defenseless Colombian goalie Oscar Cordoba.

Cordoba's very presence in goal was yet another aspect to the tangled connections between criminal violence and soccer's national place in Colombia then. Cordoba was playing that day because Colombia's top keeper of the era, the spectacular Rene Higuita, had not regained his fitness after serving seven months in prison for being used by Pablo Escobar and another drug kingpin, Carlos Molina, as a go-between in a kidnapping case.

Certainly, Andres Escobar's unfortunate foul-up disappointed the soccer-fervent Colombian population as a whole. But if not for all the guns and money spilling from the drug culture there, like some calamitous oil spill, he most likely would be alive today, the victim of nothing more than the kind of cold and timid souls publicly berating Robert Green, because they really don't know - first hand - either victory or defeat.

A long lifetime of facing that shouldn't be so terrible for Green.