Listen to the full interview above
James Rodriguez and his Colombia team were tipped as dark horses at this summer's World Cup and so far they have delivered.
With Rodriguez having netted five times en route to a quarter final against Brazil, this is already the country's greatest World Cup performance.
But twenty years ago at USA 94, a Colombia team featuring Carlos Valderrama, Faustino Asprilla and eccentric goalkeeper Rene Higuita were tipped as potential World Cup contenders, having famously thrashed Argentina 5 - 0 in Buenos Aires a year earlier during the qualifying campaign.
As we all know, everything unraveled as the Colombians crashed out. Tragedy would follow as defender Andrés Escobar, who scored an unfortunate own goal against the USA, was shot dead in Medellin a week after his return, allegedly on the orders of drug barons.
That infamous event was depicted in the must-see documentary The Two Escobars which also told the story of notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar, who was shot dead in 1993.
Tonight the documentary's director Michael Zimbalist' joined us on the show tonight and he finds Colombia's success in 2014 as "heartwarming", especially as it is a a "team not built on a foundation of drug money as the Colombian institution was in the 1990s."
Zimbalist detailed the hold narco-traffickers like Pablo Escobar had on Colombian football at the time when it was enjoying a boom and how drug money was then slowly purged from the sport in the years after Andrés Escobar's murder.
He also detailed the climate of fear which the Colombian team lived under in America and the death threats they and the coach were receiving, as well as the access he and his documentary team had to people who were willing to relive the fearful times of the 1990s.
Zimbalist also spoke about Andrés Escobar's bravery in speaking out about the dangers of drug money in football, how his legacy now lives on in the current crop of players and why he was really murdered.
Listen to the full interview via the podcast.
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