Following Colombia’s defeat against England last night on penalties, (July 3), players who missed for Colombia have received death threats.
Only minutes after the game came to an end, some of Colombia’s players started to receive vile abuse from supporters.
Mateus Uribe and Carlos Bacca both missed in the penalty shootout, with Uribe’s attempt hitting the crossbar and Bacca’s shot being saved in an incredible display of reflexes from England’s ‘keeper, Jordan Pickford.
While England fans burst into celebration, outraged Colombia fans took to social media to tell the players to ‘kill themselves’.
One twitter user wrote (translated):
Die Carlos Bacca. Son of a bitch. No-one wants you, gonorrhoea. To this country you don’t return
Another wrote (translated):
I hate you Carlos Bacca, I hate all of you, I hate your indifference, your animal surname, and your ass’s game. You’re worse than a cancer, at least with cancer you can go to a doctor and find out what you have.
Carlos Bacca, get depressed and kill yourself, so you don’t continue living this agony.
However, other fans stuck up for them, praising them for their performance and reminding others how no one can be perfect.
One tweet read (translated):
Thanks my Colombia x avernos represented so well and Carlos Bacca many blessings everything does not have to be perfect.
The threats to the players came on the 24th anniversary of the death of Andres Escobar, who was shot dead after he scored an own goal in the 1994 World Cup and was blamed for sending Colombia home.
Before the start of 2018’s World Cup in Russia, Escobar’s brother raised fears how Colombia had ‘not learned the lessons’ of the murder of Escobar, and how another player might be killed if Colombia were knocked out before the quarter-finals of the tournament.
According to the Daily Mail, Escobar’s brother begged for his country to stay level headed if the team didn’t make it through to the last eight, saying:
I want to send an important message to those people who think things can be resolved with violence, and with weapons, that they can take someone’s life just because they make a mistake, in this case the life of a football player.
Football should be a vehicle of peace and social transformation, and at the end of the day, it is just a game.
He continued:
But I truly hope that, if Colombia failed to meet these expectations, then the tragedy that happened to my brother doesn’t repeat itself. God forbid that it happens again.
Carlos must be feeling both sad for the mistake he made, and very afraid, and his family too.
The fact people are still allowed to say these things on social network sites, even threaten him with death… shows me that nothing good came out of Andres’ death, nothing was learned.
These people are just lowlifes who are not real Colombian football fans, who should be arrested and thrown into jail.
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Emily Brown first began delivering important news stories aged just 13, when she launched her career with a paper round. She graduated with a BA Hons in English Language in the Media from Lancaster University, and went on to become a freelance writer and blogger. Emily contributed to The Sunday Times Travel Magazine and Student Problems before becoming a journalist at UNILAD, where she works on breaking news as well as longer form features.