Antony De Avila says it was all a big misunderstanding. No, the MetroStars striker never denied saying that he dedicated his winning goal in Colombia’s win over Ecuador to the jailed Cali cartel cocaine bosses, but he did do some quick backpedaling when he got back to the Meadowlands. “El Pitufo” (The Smurf) says now he believes the two men in question, the Rodriguez brothers, belong in jail and he condemns all drug activity. The fact of the matter is, though, that De Avila’s sentiments are shared by many Colombians. In Colombia, drug lords like the late Pablo Escobar and the Rodriguez brothers are considered folk heroes by many. The violence they’ve spawned in cities like Cali and Medellin ù where a contract hit costs just $100 ù is condemned. The money they’ve shared is accepted appreciatively. It is only natural that the drug lords have taken an interest in soccer. The Colombian soccer boom of the late ’80s coincided with the rise of the cartels, though there’s no evidence that the latter sparked the former. But just as the drug lords shared their riches with Colombia’s poor, so too did soccer offer opportunities for young men with no future ahead of them. Former Dallas Burn star Leonel Alvarez is just one of many players saved from a life on the streets because of soccer. It’s said that certain national team players would have never learned how to eat with a fork or brush their teeth were it not for former national team coach Pacho Maturana, the architect of the soccer boom. De Avila’s comments were akin to a baseball player dedicating a pennant-winning home run to an underworld crime family. The player would be castigated and probably run out of baseball for conduct detrimental to the interest of the game. In the aftermath of the World Cup qualifier, the Colombian paper El Espectador conducted a survey. Thirty-nine percent supported De Avila and just 55 percent disapproved of his comments. by Soccer America Managing Editor Paul Kennedy