Pablo Escobar was famously a passionate football aficionado and financial patron of Atlético Nacional, a prominent professional soccer club based in his home city of Medellín, Colombia. During the height of the cocaine cartel era in the late 1980s, Escobar heavily financed the club through direct and indirect infusions of capital—a practice known colloquially as narco-fútbol—helping assemble a talented squad that eventually triumphed in the Copa Libertadores in 1989.