A Colombian national team midfielder is in hiding after receiving death threats following his team's World Cup elimination, a haunting echo of a 1994 killing that exposed how thoroughly violence has infiltrated the nation's relationship with its sport.
Jaminton Campaz missed a crucial scoring opportunity during extra time in Colombia's Round of 16 penalty shootout loss to Switzerland. Within hours, his social media accounts became a conduit for threats against him and his family. Rather than board the return flight to Colombia with his teammates, Campaz remained abroad as a precautionary measure.
The Colombian Soccer Federation issued a statement condemning the threats and calling for rapid law enforcement action. "No athlete, nor any member of their camp, should be subjected to intimidation for representing their country in a sporting context," the federation said, requesting that the Attorney General's Office "carry out, as swiftly as possible, the necessary investigations to identify, prosecute and punish those responsible for these acts."
The federation's statement invokes another tragedy that amplifies the current moment's gravity. Thirty-two years ago, Andrés Escobar was murdered in MedellÃn just days after Colombia's 2-1 loss to the United States in the 1994 World Cup. Escobar had scored an own goal in that match. The killing was never officially connected to the match itself, though the timing fueled speculation about whether rage over sporting failure had metastasized into lethal violence.
Escobar's case remains unsolved. The formal investigation went nowhere, and no conviction was secured. The killer or killers remain free, a vacuum that invites myths and assumptions to fill the space where facts should be.
Now, three decades later, death threats against a player for missing a goal suggest that structural problems enabling that climate have not been meaningfully dismantled.
Campaz issued a public statement, posting an image of himself with his face covered. "Football is also made up of difficult moments," he wrote. "My Colombia, please let us never lose sight of respect. We may think differently or feel frustration and sadness, but no passion justifies hatred or living in fear."
For public officials and investigators, several questions demand attention. Who made these threats? Were they isolated individuals or coordinated harassment campaigns? What platforms enabled their spread? Are law enforcement agencies actually investigating, or will this follow the familiar pattern of high-profile Colombian cases with initial statements of concern followed by bureaucratic inertia?
Campaz's decision to remain outside Colombia is itself evidence. It suggests he and his advisors assessed the risk as genuine enough to warrant exile from home.
The federation also called on fans and the public to ensure that "sporting disappointments never translate into real-world aggression." Its need for repetition underscores the problem: in parts of Colombian society, that translation has already happened, and the mechanisms to prevent its recurrence remain inadequate.
Whether the investigation will actually be swift, whether it will identify perpetrators and whether those individuals will be prosecuted remain open questions. The unsolved case of Andrés Escobar suggests caution about expecting resolution.
What seems certain is this: a young athlete has been driven from his home country by death threats for playing a sport. That this can happen decades after another murder indicates that institutions have failed to build the safeguards necessary to protect athletes from the violence that sporting passion can inspire.
