True insanity, it’s often said, is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” The quote has frequently been attributed to Albert Einstein, wrongly as it turns out. Yet one society’s madman is another’s genius, their brilliance mistrusted and ridiculed until it’s finally accepted as being self-evident.
The young Rene Higuita wanted the same as every other kid in Medellin’s crime-infested barrios in the 1970s. To play centre-forward for Colombia. To score at the World Cup. To become a national hero. “When I was a boy, I played as a striker,” Higuita tells FFT now. “I scored goals, but destiny had other plans. It was only by chance, at a tournament when our goalkeeper didn’t show up, that they put me in goal.”
Needless to say, the experiment went well. His youth team suddenly had a talented and more reliable custodian, but there was just one problem. Higuita, living with his beloved grandmother Ana Felisa after his father left home and his mother passed away when he was young, still harboured dreams of playing outfield. Staying in his box wasn’t an option for this sprightly renegade. “That desire to move the ball, to get forward and to score goals, it didn’t leave me,” he says, a glint forming in the corner of his eye. “I had to do it from between the goalposts. It’s the most difficult position to do that from, but I did it.”
Not even signing for Millonarios – one of Colombia’s most prestigious clubs, a nine-hour drive away in capital Bogota – in 1985 could temper a 19-year-old Higuita’s onfield wanderlust. “I got to the opposition area as often as possible,” he recalls. “I was brought down in the box many times.”
At Millonarios, the rebellious teenager deferred responsibility for the penalties he won to his more attacking team-mates. But that changed as he grew in confidence upon returning to Atletico Nacional – the Medellin club he’d supportedCarrabs in the first team, Higuita began to realise his outfielder dreams, while keeping the gloves.
