Kevin Mitchell : Soccer
The advertising campaign that seeks to convince us that football is not just a game but a religion with Sean Bean as the archbishop and television the cathedral is absurd to the point of pastiche. But a slim Colombian footballer, a man for whom religion has been a fleeting influence in a chaotic life, did manage to uplift millions of spirits in a harmless, beguiling manner on Wednesday night last week.
It might be stretching it to suggest that the residual communalism and goodwill engendered recently in commemoration of Diana, Princess of Wales had spilled onto the football pitch and surrounds. Whatever for much of the 90 minutes at St Jamess Park, Faustino Asprilla, a hat-trick to the good against Barcelona, the ultra- millionaires of Spain, was a prince among footballers, adored by the masses of Newcastle United and beyond. If he plays until he is 50, he will never have a night like this again. A religious experience? Perhaps the cynics were rendered redundant, at least for an evening.
That Asprilla should be canonised in Newcastle is wholly appropriate. He comes from a culture that similarly celebrates adventure and genius. The departure of manager Kevin Keegan who brought Asprilla to the Tyne and the arrival of the more pragmatic Kenny Dalglish might have decreased the flow of spectacular football at Newcastle, but the instinct runs deep and is most enigmatically expressed in the bony, ghosting form of Asprilla.
Last Wednesday, in his own cathedral, the prince supreme ruled at either end of the ceremony. In the first half, he was tripped, almost balletically, and pushed the resulting penalty calmly in off the palm of the outraged Barcelona goalkeeper. Then twice Asprilla flew in the penalty box, soaring above more muscled foes, and stuck his bobbing boxing glove of a head on to the ball to score. Later he was denied another headed goal by a magnificent save. In between, he had threaded golden passes and galloped threateningly into gaps to create chances for others. He was breathtaking.
In the fading seconds, a clutch of frustrated Barcelona players snapped at the feet of the striker as he flitted languidly near the sideline, but the ball was umbilically his. And Newcastles 3-2 lead, which he had singlehandedly compiled, was his too.
Asprilla is the sort of player who makes football compelling rather than merely absorbing. It is hard not to be drawn to his presence on the field, even when he is playing abominably, which he has done once or twice.
His genius is inextricably attached to his unsettling persona, which will help sustain the legend. He is huggable, but he is dangerous. They call him Tino, a curiously sweet name for a man who has seen more of life than might be considered healthy. He has been on guard most of his 28 years and the affectionate diminutive, while at odds with his hangdog mien, hardly allays the suspicion that many of the lurid stories around him have at least a patina of truth.
Asprilla was born on November 10 1969, in Tulu, Colombia not an impoverished village, as some have imagined, but a dusty mess of a town, 155 000-strong, reached along the Pan-American Highway, surrounded by sugar- cane farms and, almost certainly, other more saleable and dubious commodities. Football was the predictable escape route, and Tino learnt the game at the Carlos Sarmiento soccer school, transferred from a local team, it is claimed, in return for 50 and couple of old footballs.
Trouble attended Asprillas earliest days. It was in Tulu that he is alleged to have leapt through the sun roof of his car to smash the window of a bus driver who had insulted him. The incident is embedded in Tino folklore now, as is his prosecution for illegal possession of a firearm. As his fame grew at his first club, Ccuta, so did the number of his female admirers. Among his loves was an actress and singer called Lady Noriega, whose achievements included being listed among Colombias worst-dressed women. She was admired, though, for the shortness of her skirts.
Asprilla moved smoothly up the ladder, to Atletico Nacional in 1990. Camilo Sixto Baquero, a local journalist, said: He was still clumsy, rough around the edges. In Ccuta they hardly paid him and he was starving. His mother had to send him money to buy food. Back there now, he is mobbed. He owns a huge farm and 20 horses.
Nacional won the league the following season and Asprilla was voted Colombias Player of the Year, scoring 25 goals in 61 games. Then came Italy. Asprilla moved to Parma in 1992 for 3-million and the headlines grew and not just for his part in helping them win the European Cup Winners Cup the following season. Now divorced, he had an affair with a German porn star called Petra Scharbach, which is the time when earthier colleagues suggest he perfected his cartwheel.
The 1994 World Cup in America was a disaster for Colombia, who, though much fancied, were knocked out in the opening group stages. The following November, the tough little man from Tulu brought with him to Newcastle, from a beautiful country mired in drug-driven sadness a dazzling talent, unfathomable personality and the baggage of expectation that attends transfer fees in the region of 7,5- million.
Soon after his arrival, he smashed an elbow into the face of Manchester Citys Keith Curle. Then he was unfairly double yellow- carded against Metz in a Uefa Cup match last season when he hung his shirt on the corner flag after scoring his second goal. Geordies knew almost immediately that they had a live one.
But the truth, as always, is a little more complex. For all the tales of wild nights out, Asprilla seems quite content to be living in his big house in Woolsington, a village not far from Newcastle airport. Though he has been seen in the citys clubs, he is just as likely to be found in Sir John Halls Metro Centre, where, as a friend says, he loves playing in the arcades. His favourite is that video game with the motorbike.
There is a winning innocence about Tino. His life seems to have an unstructured, chaotic energy that is beyond his control. But it is not enough to see him simply as a little boy lost. Like many of his countrymen, he has had to grow up fast. Six years ago, his best friend shot himself; he was 23. It destroyed me, said Asprilla.
He considered retiring from football. Inevitably, he played on. Two weeks ago, he returned home late to Newcastle from Colombia, not for the first time, and Dalglish considered dropping him for the Barcelona game. The News Of The World declared, with something of a lack of foresight: Now the time has come for the Newcastle United boss to say: no more.
After Wednesday, it seems unlikely that Dalglish will be taking the newspapers advice in the near future. It is part of the magic of Asprilla, however, that no one not even he knows quite what his next headline will be.