The World's Most Informative Back Tattoo
Everything you need to know about Colombian soccer as outlined by one dude's back.
Sometimes, when you’re really living in the moment, you can feel totally comfortable in environments that you’d never expect. Take a Colombian soccer game, for example. There are fans clamoring all around you–jumping screaming, shoving, and singing. At one point, after a goal is scored, you even find yourself being flung three rows away from where you were standing and landing facedown on the ground. While others might feel intimidated or even alarmed by this scene, for me, because I was making such an effort to really be present in the moment, I was enjoying all of it. And of course, when I say that I was “in the moment,” I mean that I was “blackout drunk.”
So how did I find myself drunk, surrounded by screaming Colombians, sent flying with every goal?
Well, I’m going to use this random dude’s back to tell you.
1947
Our story begins in 1947 which is the year that Atlético Nacional, one of two professional soccer teams from Medellín, was founded. All of the tattoos on this guy’s back are related to Atlético Nacional in some way. He’s not the only person I saw at the game with Atlético Nacional tattoos, but his—particularly the giant face—were the most illustrative.
The Atlético Nacional stadium is conveniently situated right across the street from Rock Hostel, so once a week the owners would lead a big group outing to go watch a game. And during my second week in Medellín, I decided to join them. There was only one problem: the game was sold out and I didn’t have a ticket.
I asked around the hostel and got a lead on some last-minute tickets being sold outside of the stadium by a man named Andre. Andre had a solid side hustle going. He would take season tickets from people who couldn’t use them and sell them outside of the games.
Atlético Nacional season tickets are strange. The ticket holder receives a physical card, sort of like a bus pass, that they can scan for every game. That makes reselling seats for an individual game really inconvenient. Andre needed those passes back after they’d been used. Because of this, he walked us all the way through security to the point where we scanned the tickets. Once we were through, we had to frantically pass the tickets back to him over the shoulders of security guards who were clearly sick of his weekly shit. But finally, after the whole ordeal, we were inside the stadium.
Los Del Sur
When I got inside the stadium, the energy was like nothing I’ve experienced before. Everyone was holding flags and signs and banners, they were decked out in Atlético Nacional gear, and they didn’t stop chanting and singing the entire game.
It’s a bit hard to decipher, but the lower part of the back tattoo reads “Los Del Sur,” meaning “those from the South.” Los Del Sur is the name of a barra brava which is the Spanish term for an organized soccer fanclub. We don’t have barra bravas in the U.S. but apparently, in a lot of other countries, soccer teams have organized fan clubs who plan to go to games together and wave large signs and banners. In England they’re called hooligan firms which is a classically stupid British name.
I cannot overstate how hard these barra bravas go, especially Los Del Sur. First of all, they hold these huge banners, like the ones you can see in the photo above. These banners don’t just offer moral support for the team, they also seem to provide some structural support for the crowd. These guys in the photo below? They’re standing on the balcony railing and the only thing keeping them from toppling over into the crowd below is their grip on the banner.
This also explains why our friend with the back tattoo is holding onto those green streamers for dear life. Not only is he standing on a railing, he’s also working as one of the critical junctions of two banners. (Later, at the second game I’d attend, a Colombian man next to me would finally take pity on me and explain that I should hang onto the banners for safety, and it made a huge difference.)
Another feature of Los Del Sur is that they never stop singing and chanting. Throughout the entire game, everyone is somehow on the same page as to what they’ll sing next. And how do they do that? By bringing an entire marching band to the game.
The band, pictured above, sat in the middle section of the upper deck, and I had to really resist just yelling out questions I had for them. How did they organize? Is it like a phone tree? Do they have a Whatsapp group? Do they have meetings? Are there meeting minutes? Can I read the meeting minutes? It’s just so hard to envision, as an American, putting in this much organizational work to be a fan at a sports game. The best we can do at home is the wave and even that has like a 40% success rate.
Refreshment Options
Before I get to the most interesting part of the tattoo—the giant face—I wanted to take a brief moment to discuss the refreshment options available at the game.
The stadium does not sell alcohol. Which, given how crazy the fans are, seems like a sound choice. There were guys walking around selling non-alcoholic beer, but they didn’t seem to be doing a very good business.
But, like many rules, this one is made to be broken in the name of profit. And if you pay attention to the people walking around the stadium, you notice a few of them are discreetly (-ish) selling alcohol out of their backpacks. What are they selling? Colombia’s greatest invention, also known as the aguardientes juicebox.
Aguardientes is a Colombian liquor with 29% alcohol. It tastes like anise (black licorice, ew) and is available everywhere. It’s also the reason someone can show up to a Colombian soccer match sober and be blackout drunk by halftime. The man I bought it from even opened the juicebox for us and gave us a little plastic shot glass so we could share, very classy.
Now being the responsible drinker that I am, I felt it was prudent to also purchase some water. I saw a guy selling water and waved him over. I purchased what I thought would be a water bottle, but instead he handed me this.
So, I found myself alternating sips from a liquor juicebox and a bag of water. Apparently, at soccer games, drinking from bags is totally the norm. Well, at least according to the fans around me who were drinking from some bags and snorting from others.
The Giant Face
As the game went on and I got increasingly drunk, I spotted our friend with the tattoo. The main thing that drew my attention to his back was the giant face. I pointed it out to one of my friends, who commented, “Oh, I think that’s a famous player who was assassinated by the cartel!” and she was right.
Andrés Escobar (no relation to Pablo) was a Colombian professional soccer player who played for Atlético Nacional as well as the Colombian national team. He was extremely popular in Colombia, though he ran into some trouble at the 1994 World Cup. Colombia was expected to do well but then, in the second match, Andrés scored a goal on his own team which led to them losing the game and being eliminated from the tournament.
Five days after Colombia was eliminated from the World Cup, Andrés Escobar was shot and killed in Medellín in an incident that is widely accepted to be retribution for the goal he scored. Despite all the drama, he is still viewed very positively in Colombia. Over 120,000 people went to his funeral and Atlético Nacional fans still continue to honor his legacy at games.
Now you might be wondering, wait, if this guy scored a goal on his own team why doesn’t everyone hate him? It’s mainly because, up until then, he had an excellent reputation. Outside of soccer, Andrés Escobar dedicated himself to philanthropy, hoping to uplift his country’s image. After the World Cup incident, people might have been upset but they certainly didn’t think he deserved to be murdered, especially given all of the work he did trying to prove that Colombia was more than the crime it was often associated with.
His story is a poetic tale of international image, murder, and character, commemorated forever through one very sweaty back tattoo.
The Four Logos
The only tattoos we haven’t addressed yet are the four logos that encircle Andrés Escobar’s face. These are all current or previous logos of the Atlético Nacional team. Almost every single person at the game had a jersey or shirt with one of these logos.
I didn’t have a jersey for that first game. So, my friend Clare and I went to a large thrift store, bought a bunch of second-hand jerseys, saved two for ourselves, and then sold the rest at a profit for the hostel’s next game.
After that first game was over, I made my way back to the hostel. I don’t remember this, but I was informed the next day that I went up to every single person in the hostel and giddily told them about how amazing the game was. I then put on music, smoked a joint, stole a slice of someone’s pizza, and went to bed.
We all have our quirks when we’re blackout drunk—mine is that I get really excited about something and then feel the need to tell every single person in sight about it. One time in college, I blacked out on the red line and went up to every single person in the car to ask them if they’d seen the Fast and Furious movies. It was my priority to inform them that it’s a must-watch franchise.
I’m sober now, but I stand by my enthusiasm after the game. Even if you don’t care for soccer, Colombian soccer fandom is a sport in its own right. I’m grateful this guy decided to go shirtless that day. Next time you’re at a party and you’re debating taking off your shirt, just remember you never know what you might teach someone.