ESPN 30 for 30: Soccer and a Pinochet led Military Coup Collide

[MinM]

Chile's 1974 World Cup team qualified for the international tournament by scoring a goal against no one in a stadium turned into a concentration camp.

This haunting but little-known piece of history is the subject of a new ESPN 30 for 30 documentary premiering tonight, The Opposition, from director, producer and St. Louis native Jeffrey Plunkett.

"That whole chapter in Chilean history is totally surreal," Plunkett tells Daily RFT. "It really is the equivalent to St. Louis waking up and Busch Stadium being turned into a prison." ...

On September 11, 1973, Augusto Pinochet lead a military junta against the Chilean government, seizing control over the country and throwing dissidents into a makeshift jail at the national stadium, Estadio Nacional Julio Martínez Prádanos. Eventually, 40,000 people were imprisoned and tortured.

As their countrymen suffered, players on Chile's national soccer team were one win away from qualifying for the 1974 World Cup. ...

http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/dailyrft/2014/04/soccer_and_a_military_coup_col.php

[Judi Lynn]

1. The article is so appropriate. People need to know more about Chile & what happened.

The US effectively kept most U.S. citizens, the ones who funded all those covert ops and schemes, plots, assassinations, torture, while the country sat witlessly on its thumbs, totally unaware.

The young soccer player must have felt he would go insane meeting the same people officially who were responsible for his own mother's agony as a political prisoner.

Thank you for this post.