Colombian Player Gets A Bit Sensitive, Kills A Heckling Fan.

By: chris | July 6th, 2009

Last week the major news out of Colombia was that Santa Fe coach Ruben Israel resigned due to death threats, despite never having coached a single game. And it wasn’t as though he sat on it for a bit, weighing his decision. No, he resigned as soon as offices opened the very next morning. Why? Because death threats in Colombia are taken very, very seriously.

Add a new item to the list of things which are taken very, very seriously in Colombia: heckling players. Heckle the wrong one and it’ll get you killed, as one unfortunate fan learned this weekend.

Javier Florez, an Atletico Junior player, shot and killed Israel Castillo in the Caribbean coastal city of Barranquilla on Sunday when the 27-year-old electrician along with a group of people called him a “maleta” — which in Colombian parlance describes a “lousy” player.

“The young men shouted at him ‘weak, weak’ and he (Florez) turned around, took a gun and shot,” said a witness to the incident, according to The Latin American Herald Tribune.

Like any good footballer in a fight, Florez then ran away – presumably whilst kicking wildly at nothing – but did later turn himself into police so that he can spend the next six months in prison – or whatever happens to go as the current sentence for murder in Colombia. (A cookie?)

After scampering, locals took a small portion of justice into their own hands by destroying his pint-sized Chevrolet sedan.

Javier was also supposedly high, but on marijuana – so chances are this was a more mellow murder than it could’ve been.

While Florez certainly holds the brunt of the blame, the fans who chanted also hold a small portion. And not just these fans, but those all around the world. Fans that chant how rubbish a player is when they could never be half as good, are failing to realize their idiocy. All too common, and something which needs to be dealt with. It’s only a child’s game, after all.

We see so many sports, including football, trying to beef up the marketing, making the sport out to seem more than it really is. So maybe it’s time for South America to adopt a campaign which tries to lessen the importance and cultural significance of football. Things like…Football: It’s Just A Game; Football: Less Meaningful Than Knitting; or Football: Please Don’t Kill Me.