“Colombian soccer champion America de Cali are first to admit cocaine dollars had a hand in their sporting heyday. But after years of paying the price, they’re trying to wipe the slate clean,” writes Reuters’ Helen Popper in an inspiring report on the team’s (and the city’s) efforts to make a new name for themselves and lift sanctions that were imposed as result of that dark period.
Placed on the U.S. government anti-drugs blacklist following an association with drug cartels in the 1980s and early 1990s that included stories of “match-fixing, money-laundering and players being rewarded with lavish parties and prostitutes,” the team has been prevented them from “having a local bank account or even getting sponsors for more than a decade.”
But that was then. “Today, America draw crowds of up to 18,000 and their first national championship win in six years in December has given impetus” to Cali Mayor Jorge Ivan Opsina‘s campaign to find some 4,000 background-checked shareholders who can invest around $400 each to re-launch the club as Nueva (New) America de Cali sometime in 2009.