About Freddy Rincón

You didn’t have to be Colombian to feel the rush we all felt when Freddy Rincon scored that goal back in the Italy 1990 soccer World Cup. It was a sublime moment, filled with that magical realism they’ve shoved down our throats like they do all history but on this occasion, there was a magic that couldn’t be contained in a García Marquez novel or some underdog Colombian story. This shit was history in the making, and we all saw it live and direct, as a sign that things would somehow get better someday, that not all was lost, that we could move ahead if we did so decidedly, without flinching.

Freddy Rincon embodied not only the strength of Colombia: he defined the unbreakable, undeterred force of the human spirit. I was watching the news about his death a couple days ago, (actually I was watching that part of the news dedicated to going over his life), and after that goal, Freddy went places: he played in Brazil, became the first Colombian to play for the Real Madrid, too many feats to be retold by a soccer ignorant such as myself. The obituary was surrounded by hyperbolic “mariposas amarillas” babble — something that was once sweet and romantic and now has become a cliched copy on the evening news to connect literature with sports and with life in this country in general to make it more bearable.

But the fact is that no matter how many great things he did in his life, this one goal, this particular burst of athletic brilliance and team grandeur was, has been…will be, the greatest thing we’ve ever done in a World Cup. And one of the beautiful things was that it wasn’t about winning. It was about tying, it was about closing the odds between the great powers of fútbol and us. It was about how bad we wanted it, how determined we were to achieve it and how we got there. History, they say, is defined by winners, but Freddy somehow showed us you didn’t really have to win all the time to be a winner. You could just play a great game. Do your best. Be sure of it. And garner the attention of the entire world. Eduardo Galeano wrote about that in his book, “el fútbol a sol y sombra”:

And I guess if we can connect literature with Freddy beyond the cute but preposterous garciamarquiano philosophy, we could also quote Charles bukowski to say good bye and thank you:

“if you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start.”

We still have a lot to learn from Freddy Rincon: resilience. Faith. Strength. And an unshakable blindness of the heart. I wouldn’t call it passion, because I hate to box it in that petty category where feelings go when they’re messy and undefined and useless. I don’t believe in passion. But I do believe in that blindness that made Freddy leap like a giraffe and score that goal, giving us something to believe in. That was a beautiful moment. And for that moment I’ll be forever grateful to have lived in a time alongside Freddy Rincon. May he Rest In Peace.