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Search: ' Francisco Maturana'

Stories

National revival

Nick Dorrington wonders whether the return of a legendary figure will help to lift Columbian football from the doldrums

It is hard to view Colombia’s inability to qualify for the last three World Cups as anything other than a failure on behalf of the Colombian Football Federation (FCF) considering the popularity of football in South America’s second most populous nation. In the appointment of former national team coach Francisco Maturana to oversee the development of the country’s football the FCF believes it has a man capable of making the necessary changes to ensure more regular participation in future tournaments.

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Colombia – Drug wars affecting football

The drug money has dried up, but Nacional of Medellín are back – to the despair of their popular but inept neighbours. Jake Lagnado reports

Hear the word Medellín and you might think of Pa­blo Escobar and the Medellín Cartel. Indeed, in Med­ellín, as in the rest of Colombia, there were many financial and personal ties between the drugs trade and professional football, as symbolised by the campaign to free the city’s favourite son, Rene Hig­uita, from jail in 1993. Since Escobar’s death the same year, the trade has been reorg­anised: much less drug money is in­vested in the local economy, meaning football clubs now have to market themselves to avoid total ruin.

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Saudi Arabia

Alan Moore explains why the Gulf kingdom is unlikely to spring many surprises at this year's World Cup, not to attract any high profile foreign players

Saudi Arabia arrived on the international scene with one of the greatest goals in World Cup history. Saed Al Owarain’s mazy run and shot against Belgium in 1994 lit the fuse for a footballing explosion in one of the most private and secretive countries on earth. But despite another World Cup qualification this time ar­ound, their third in a row, Saudi football has been in steady decline for some time.

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Anything goes

Brazil are in turmoil, Peru are in despair, and Chile are in the pool with a load of Colombian women. It's never dull in South America, as Leopoldo Iturra discovers

Gabriel García Márquez won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982 for his use of magic realism, a style which deliberately exaggerates Latin American folk­lore and which allows anything to happen – from the appearance of Romanies who invent snow to immortal incestuous families.

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