Targeting Targetmen

Former Colombia footballer Albeiro ‘Palomo’ Usuriaga was shot dead at his home in Cali yesterday. Usuriaga, 37, was playing cards ...

Former Colombia footballer Albeiro ‘Palomo’ Usuriaga was shot dead at his home in Cali yesterday. Usuriaga, 37, was playing cards with friends when he was shot several times with a handgun. Police colonel Mario Gutierrez said there were no leads at present. Usuriaga is not the first footballer to be murdered. Often, the reason is not necessarily footballing. Micky Aigner takes a look at some of the other recent footballing homicides

BAD BUSINESS SENSE

• 31-year-old Russian international Yuri Tishkov was shot down in central Moscow in January 2003. Tishkov’s career was done in by a broken leg in 1993. After that, he tried a career as a businessman to go with being a commentator. Reports suggested that the business part of his post-fotballing career was the wrong choice and led to the murder.

SHOOTING OFF THE BALL

• Things don’t get more bizarre than when an off-duty security guard became angry after the ball landed in his private backyard and used his shotgun to punish former Honduras star Jorge Martinez.

DRUGS THE CAUSE

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• San Pedro Sula, a notoriously violent part of Honduras, woke up to a Sunday morning shock in January 2003 when international goalkeeper Milton Flores was gunned down in his car. Flores (29), a Real Espana player ‘‘believed to be involved with the drug mafia’’, was talking to a prostitute when a shower of bullets got him.

SUICIDE, COLOMBIAN STYLE

• The best-known of the lot. A self-goal in the World Cup cost Colombian defender Andres Escobar his life. Having returned home after a nighmarish World Cup, Escobar, 27, was shot 12 times outside a nightclub in Medellin, considered by many to be the most dangerous city in the world. Witnesses reported that one of the hitmen shouted ‘Goal!’ ‘Goal!’ while pumping bullets into the hapless defender.

BLOODIED CLUBS

• Not one but three owners of Yugoslav clubs were killed in successive years — 1999-2001. On July 22, 2001, Zvezdara Belgrade’s 48-year-old owner Branislav Trojanovic was shot in the head four times outside his suburban home. Prior to Trojanovic’s death, Jusuf Bulic, owner of FC Zeleznik Belgrade, was killed in 1999, while Zeljko Raznatovic Arkan, of 2001 champions Obilic, was killed a year later.