Nacional: Colombia’s finest

Next stop for the champions of Colombia and now South America is the Club World Cup

WORDS: Carl Worswick

World Soccer, December 2016

For now, at least, the debate is dead. Atletico Nacional’s triumph in the 2016 Libertadores Cup shuts the lid on a dispute that has burned for decades between the new kings of South America and rival clubs Millonarios and America de Cali.

All three sides have long made vociferous claims to be Colombia’s biggest and most successful club, but Nacional’s record 15th league title last year, and the lifting of a second Libertadores in July, buries any lingering doubts. For the time being, the crown rests firmly in Medellin.

This has never been just a petty bar-room squabble between supporters for boasting rights. Nor has it been solely about football.

From the advent of professional football in Colombia, the country’s number one sport has been entangled with politics, drug lords, war, power, money and regional identity. And as the country’s three biggest clubs, so America, Millonarios and Nacional became the most potent recipients for these wild, unruly and often dangerous forces.

Hailing from capital city Bogota, Millonarios were early trailblazers. Supported by the country’s powerful Conservative Party and fi nanced by wealthy and infl uential businessmen, they stole an early march on their rivals.

It was an era drenched in blood, and from the belly of this violent beast emerged the country’s first professional league. The death of left-leaning presidential candidate Jorge Eliecer Gaitan had unleashed a ferocious war that cost at least 250,000 lives. The thirst for blood was unquenchable – and football was the government’s antidote.

Millonarios’ early dominance was forged on the back of an illegal player raid that started in Argentina and spread across South America to Europe. Millos brought the stars to the circus, and for the first time in the country’s history the masses were seduced by football’s beauty. The Ballet Azul stormed to four titles in five years, but the climax of their early dominance was undoubtedly an Alfredo Di Stéfano-inspired 4-2 friendly win against Real Madrid in 1952. For a brief moment, perhaps, Millonarios were the best team in the world.

For the next 20 years, Colombia slumped into the backwaters of world football. The money dried up, the stars disappeared and mediocrity swept the league. But by the 1970s a new source of dirty income had flooded the country and polluted the veins of Colombian football.

America – from Colombia’s third city, Cali – suddenly awoke from mid-table obscurity after the Rodriguez Orejuela brothers took control of the club that had a supposed curse hanging round its neck. On the back of a public exorcism led by a priest, America won their first title in 1979. Within a few years, La Mechita would be one of the biggest clubs on the continent.

However, their five straight domestic titles and three consecutive appearances in the Libertadores Cup Final were not achieved through a “simple and rigorous reorganisation of the club” as former player Alex Escobar once said. It was born from a cocaine boom that would wreak untold misery on the country for the next few decades. Refs were bribed, kidnapped and, in 1989, even killed. Matches were fixed, players lived in fear, and the egos of some of the world’s most dangerous and powerful criminals ran out of control.

Meanwhile, Millonarios had fallen under the watch of Jose Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, a pig farmer turned billionaire as number two of the powerful Medellin drug cartel. Their glory days would again flicker as he ensured back-to-back title wins in 1987 and 1988.

But if America were the plucky upstarts and the old guard of Millonarios represented history and tradition, Atlético Nacional came along a different path: that of football pioneers.

Before the 1970s, the Medellin side had won just one title and were a midtable outfit. But in 1976, they appointed a coach who would change the fortunes of not just Los Verdolagas but also shake Colombian football from its slumbers. Osvaldo Zubeldia had won the Libertadores Cup three times for unfancied Argentinian side Estudiantes de la Plata at the tail end of the 1960s and also beat Manchester United in the 1968 Club World Cup Final. It was a team without stars that combined radical training and tactical innovations with a win-at-all-costs attitude.

Zubeldia’s reputation took a battering in the years to come as his “anti-futbol” style irked football purists in Argentina. But Nacional president Hernan Botero Moreno remained suitably impressed and offered a sizeable sum to tempt the coach into a new project. “Osvaldo was doing things that nobody had ever attempted before in Colombia,” explains ex-Colombia coach Francisco Maturana. “He taught us to eat properly, train better and become professionals. He taught us the importance of strategy.”

This shift in style earned Nacional widespread respect and they won the league in 1976 and 1981. “He was the best thing that happened to me as a player and later as a manager,” former international Pedro Sarmiento told AS last year. “He was the pillar of our generation.”

Zubeldia would die a few months after Nacional’s 1981 title win but his legacy lived on. Throughout the 1980s, a new generation of coaches rooted in his discipline came through and had a radical impact in shaping the nation’s football.

The most famous and successful of these was Maturana, who was originally a dentist from Colombia’s poorest region, Choco. He had played as a central defender under Zubeldia at Nacional in the 1970s and was also influenced by Rinus Michels and the great Holland side of the 1970s via Uruguayan coach Ricardo De Leon, who had studied in Holland. Combining this doctrines, Maturana also crucially added a Colombian flavour.

After one season in his first job, at Once Caldas, Maturana was appointed coach of Nacional. A few months later he also took control of the national team.

Just as Ajax had been the basis of Michels’ Holland, so Maturana forged a similar symbiotic relationship between Nacional and Colombia. And it didn’t take long for results to show.

In his first international tournament, Colombia finished third at the 1987 Copa América and then went on to end a 28-year absence by qualifying for the 1990 World Cup. In his dual role, he also turned Nacional into the first Colombian team to win the Libertadores, beating Olimpia of Paraguay in a penalty shoot-out in 1989.

Maturana had given Colombia an identity by playing attractive football that left fans enchanted. Yet for many outside Colombia, Nacional’s era of glory is remembered through the prism of Pablo Escobar, the most notorious and ruthless of all the country’s football drug dons.

As early as 1981 the alarm bells had been ringing. During that year’s Medellin clasico against Independiente, Nacional president Botero was caught on camera ripping a fistful of dollars from his pocket and waving it at the referee. Four years later, he was the first Colombian to be extradited to the USA on drug and money laundering charges. The league organisers responded by cancelling games in protest.

Botero’s departure hit Nacional hard and the club lurched into bankruptcy under Botero’s successor, Hernan Mesa. But then everything would change.

No document has ever proved Escobar’s involvement with Nacional. Indeed, he was actually a fan of local rivals Independiente and was buried in a coffin wrapped with their flag. But throughout the 1980s and until his death in 1993, few now doubt the towering influence he exerted.

With Colombia’s three big clubs under cartel control, the rivalry began to boil – until 1989, when it exploded.

Escobar launched a war against the state over the government’s decision to extradite drug traffickers to the US. As newspaper buildings and aeroplanes lay bombed, and presidential candidates were murdered, Medellin turned into the world’s most dangerous city. And into this fire, the quarter-finals of the Libertadores Cup pitted Millonarios against Nacional.

After winning the first leg 1-0 in Medellin, the return tie in Bogota was described by some as the most volatile game ever between two Colombian sides as the referee lost control and the match finished with Millonarios players swarming around the official, livid at his decisions. “That night, people in the stands were carrying guns, there were weapons everywhere,” writes Fernando Araujo Velez in his book No Era Futbol, Era Fraude (It Wasn’t Football, It was Fraud). “I’ve no idea how it didn’t end in tragedy.”

Millonarios would shrink back into the shadows as years of financial mismanagement and government drug controls almost bankrupted the club, while America were placed on a US drug blacklist and then relegated in 2011. Five years later they are still in the second tier, playing to empty stadiums.

However, Nacional suffered nothing like the same consequences and their boom years would again return.

Nowadays nobody really likes talking about the narco-football era of the 1980s, as players believe it degrades their achievements and football’s bigwigs feel embarrassed by the past. “Why is the foreign media obsessed with that period?” asks the league’s press officer. “We now have the cleanest league in the world. Why don’t you instead focus on that?”

Yet those bold claims clearly smack of hyperbole. Even in 2016, one of the league’s leading clubs, Envigado, remain on the same drug black list that led to America’s collapse. The club isn’t allowed to have a bank account, their shirt carries no sponsor and players are often paid out of a rucksack in the club car park.

Colombian football has undoubtedly changed, however, and one of the unsung heroes in this transformation has been players’ union boss Carlos Gonzalez Puche.

An ex-footballer from a middle-class background, Puche had to hang up his boots early due to a “club cartel that blacklisted players fighting for their rights”. He turned to law and wrote a defining thesis on labour rights and how Colombian players were treated no better than slaves. Not surprisingly, he quickly ran into trouble.

“I’ve had to meet with some of the most dangerous criminals in this country and I never knew if I’d come out of them alive,” admits Puche. “I’ve received more death threats than I can remember.”

But somehow he survived, and in 2004 set up Acolfutpro to represent players who had fallen in dispute with egregious club owners. In partnership with FIFpro, and backed by high-profile players such as ex-Colombia captain Mario Yepes and Internazionale defender Ivan Cordoba, his struggle pulled Colombian football from the darkness of the criminal underworld and helped to shape a fairer and more professional relationship.

“I’ve always tried to argue that if players were treated well and their rights were respected, then clubs would benefi t,” says Puche. “In the last few years we have achieved a lot.”

Helping Puche in his struggle was a law introduced by the government in 2011 that followed a period of crisis in the sport which had seen many clubs on the verge of bankruptcy. The collapse of the drug cartels, the ensuing fi ght for control by rival directors, and fi nancial mismanagement had left football in ruins. Small clubs with few fans were able to win the league, but on the continental stage Colombia struggled to compete.

The new law sought to “organise football” and convert teams into PLCs in order to make football more transparent. The league accused the government of messing in its business and many articles of the bill were clumsily implemented or selectively ignored. However, the law helped turn football into a business, and Atletico Nacional in particular fl ourished under the financial backing of one of the world’s wealthiest men, Carlos Ardila Lulle.

Nacional’s owners, the Organizacion Ardila Lulle, include more than 80 businesses that stretch from fizzy-pop manufacturers and sugar refi neries to the country’s biggest TV companies and radio stations. In 1996, the Lulle business empire took control of Nacional.

Results were initially disappointing despite huge injections of cash, but in 2010 Nacional finally turned a profit – and ever since their success has been quite spectacular.

First under Juan Carlos Osorio, who is now in charge of Mexico, and then current boss Reinaldo Rueda, over the last few years Nacional have won five league titles, two domestic cups and finally the Libertadores. “I’ve become obsessed with the Copa Libertadores,” Osorio said in 2014. “I lie in bed at night thinking about it.”

Rueda was able to achieve Osorio’s dream largely because of the continuity and long-term vision that the Nacional project offers. “It’s a planned and organised club that is held together by different processes,” says Nacional president Juan Carlos de la Cuesta.

It’s a structure that rivals Millonarios and America have lacked for decades. Indeed, six months before the club’s Libertadores triumph, victory in last year’s clausura championship also edged Nacional ahead of Millonarios in the title race for the fi rst time. Millos’ humiliation and fall from grace was epitomized in one photo: that of the team bus with a big blob of blue paint splattered over their former slogan “We’re the team with the most Colombian league titles.”

Nacional’s dominance in recent years has turned them into one of the country’s most successful companies, turning revenues of $78million last year.

“It’s simply impossible to compete with them any more,” moaned Junior owner Fuad Char after long-term transfer target Miguel Borja chose to join Nacional this summer. “They just always outbid you.”

So powerful is Nacional’s financial muscle that even Donald Trump was told to take his cash elsewhere following a failed $100m bid last year. “Maybe they think we’re stupid,” said the US presidential candidate. “We made an important bid but we won’t be offering any more; these negotiations are now closed.”

Swollen on another fl ood of transfer funds following post-Libertadores deals that saw Davinson Sanchez (Ajax), Sebastian Perez (Boca Juniors) and Marlos Moreno (Manchester City) depart, Nacional have now raked in over $20m this year alone. But with the Club World Cup on the horizon, Rueda has a tough job on his hands to pick up the pieces and rebuild a new side. 

It is a familiar problem for successful South American sides, but Nacional can be proud of the fact that they have come a long way and, this time at least, their achievements will be remembered for all the right reasons.

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THE COACH - Reinaldo RUEDA

Age 59 (16.04.57)

Began his coaching career with Deportivo Cali’s youth sides while taking German classes to gain entry to Cologne’s German Sports University. After two years doing his badges, he returned to Colombia and had stints at Cortulua, Cali and Medellin. A bronze medal with the Colombia under-20s at the 2003 Youth World Cup in UAE followed, before he was promoted to senior national coach in 2004. However, he was sacked in 2006 by a federation who were irked at his support for the newly formed players’ union. Led Honduras (2010) and Ecuador (2014) to World Cup qualification, and when Juan Carlos Osorio stepped down to join Sao Paulo last year he personally recommended Rueda to Nacional.

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THE POWER CURVE - The key figures at Atlético Nacional

JUAN CARLOS DE LA CUESTA
Became the club’s youngest president in history when he was appointed in 2010 at the age of 36. He is the financial brain that has steered Nacional through their most successful period.

VICTOR MARULANDA
A former player and ex president, the club’s sports director has spent 28 years with Nacional and is now responsible for all transfer activity. Scored an own goal in Nacional’s 1995 Libertadores Cup Final loss to Gremio.

CARLOS ARDILA LULLE
One of Colombia’s richest men, his business empire took control of Nacional in 1996. The club owner’s fizzy pop company, Postobon, sponsored the Colombian league until 2014.

REINALDO RUEDA
Coach who brought the Libertadores Cup back to Medellin for the first time since 1989. Previously had successful spells with Honduras, Ecuador and Colombia’s under-20 side.

BERNARDO REDIN
Rueda’s assistant joined Nacional in the summer and often stands in as coach for league games due to a schedule that could see Nacional play 85 games in 2016. 

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STADIUM - Estadio Atanasio Girardot (capacity 44,739)
Named after a revolutionary leader who fought alongside Simon Bolivar in the Colombian war of independence, the Atanasio Giradot is home to both Atletico Nacional and city rivals Deportivo Independiente Medellin.

The third-biggest stadium in Colombia, it is the only ground to generate solar energy – from 40 panels that are installed on the roof of the western stand.

Now part of a broader complex that caters for 37 different sports, the Atanasio Girardot also occasionally hosts the national team’s home games.

Nacional’s future may, however, lie elsewhere with president De La Cuesta warning that the club’s long-term goal is to build their own stadium.