Former Premier League star Faustino Asprilla has told how he stopped a rival player being killed by a Pablo Escobar hitman.
The Newcastle United legend claimed the drug baron’s feared gang had offered to murder Paraguay goalkeeper Jose Luis Chilavert.
It came after Colombian Asprilla had a fight with the goalie during a 1997 World Cup qualifier in Paraguayan capital Asuncion.
The 50-year-old said he got a call from assassin Julio Cesar Correa Valdes, dubbed Fierro, asking him to go to his hotel. He added: “When I arrived, he was with about 10 other people, all drunk and partying with Paraguayan women.
“He said to me, ‘We need you to give us authorisation so two men here stay in as they want to go and kill Chilavert.’
“I said, ‘What? Are you mad? You’re going to finish off Colombian football, that can’t happen. What happens on the pitch stays on the pitch’.”
Asprilla, who was a Newcastle striker from 1996 to 1998, made the shock confession in a mini-series about his life on Colombian TV. Fierro was later killed by paramilitaries in the country.
