Colombian Goalie a Real Keeper/Sweeper : Soccer: Higuita’s style is different and daring and has often paid off. His team faces Guadalajaran squad tonight.
Rene Higuita is 30 yards downfield, heading a ball into the midfield to start an attack for Colombia. Or is that Higuita standing guard in front of the goal? No, that is Higuita on the flank, taking the ball away from an advancing forward.
As if he has conquered the laws of time and space, Higuita, the extraordinary goalkeeper for Colombia’s national soccer team, seems to be two places at once. Or three. Or four.
Higuita not only shut out the Soviet Union during the first round of the Marlboro Cup Tuesday night at the Coliseum, he scored the winning penalty kick in the tiebreaker to send Colombia into tonight’s championship game at 9 against Chivas of Guadalajara, which beat Costa Rica, 3-0. Costa Rica and the Soviets play at 7.
Soviet Coach Valeri Lobonovsky was asked about Higuita’s play. “Nothing special,” he said through an interpreter.
Either something was lost in the translation or Lobonovsky wasn’t paying attention. Whatever one thinks of Higuita as a goalkeeper, and the South American Press Assn. voted him the best on the continent last year, he is unquestionably a very special player.
Only 23, he has been credited with inventing a new position--keeper sweeper.
There have been bold international-class goalkeepers in the past, those who would venture to the edge of the penalty area in efforts to head off enemy offensives. But Higuita redefines the meaning of bold, going where no goalkeeper has gone before.
“We’re seeing more goalkeepers today who venture off their lines, players that are sweepers behind the sweepers,” U.S. Coach Bob Gansler said. “But Higuita obviously takes it to the nth degree.
“It’s appealing to watch, and it can be very effective. But you need an individual who has his talent. There aren’t many of those. He’s an exceptional athlete, an amazing player.”
As a sweeper, who, on most teams is the last line of defense before the goalkeeper, he is capable of making exceptional plays. While playing for his club team, Atletico Nacional of Medellin, in the Intercontinental Cup last December in Tokyo, he went out to meet AC Milan’s Dutch standout, Marco Van Basten, on a breakaway outside the goal area and stole the ball from him.
Yet, despite his defensive abilities, Higuita insists, “I am a midfielder at heart.”
And it is in the midfield where he sometimes can be found.
“It’s more fun up there,” he said after Tuesday night’s game.
It also is more precarious for his team if the defenders fail to cover for him despite instructions from Coach Francisco Maturana to do so. In a 2-0 victory over Colombia earlier this month in Miami, Uruguay scored its first goal into a virtually open net after catching Higuita out of position. But that seldom happens. In 16 games for the national team last year, he had 11 shutouts.
Asked after the Uruguay game if he worried about Higuita’s wanderings, Maturana said, “If so, I would have been in an asylum two years ago.”
After the victory over the Soviets, Maturana was asked the same question.
“No, because I know him,” he said. “When he does that, it means he’s into the game, he’s alert. I get nervous when he doesn’t do that. Certainly, one day, somebody is going to take advantage of that, and they’re going to score. But it’s not going to be Higuita’s fault. It’s going to be the defender’s fault.”
Critics contend that Higuita will be shown up against superior competition at this summer’s World Cup because he doesn’t dominate the goal area as a world-class goalkeeper should and that he is weak against high balls.
But Higuita, who does not lack confidence, said he did not sign a contract with a European professional team this year because he expects to be so much more marketable after his performance in the World Cup.
Maturana said Higuita some day will be considered the world’s best goalkeeper.
“I like all my players, but he’s my preferred child,” Maturana said. “He embodies what soccer is all about--like the soccer that you see played on the streets--such as creativity and astuteness.”
Maturana might be Higuita’s No. 1 fan, but the coach has competition from virtually everyone else in Colombia. The goalkeeper is believed to be better known in Colombia than the country’s president, Virgilio Barco.
“He is the most famous person in the whole country right now,” Colombian defender Luis Carlos Perea said.
His popularity is spreading, even into North America. He will be featured Saturday night on one of Spanish-language television network Univision’s most popular shows, “Sabado Gigante.”
After scoring 25 goals on penalty kicks last year, Higuita had his first opportunity this year on Feb. 4 in a tiebreaker against the United States in Miami. He converted his penalty kick, while the U.S. goalkeeper, Kasey Keller, missed his. That was the difference in Colombia’s 2-1 victory.
