Panama motivated by late Henríquez

Panama’s players will likely have a lump in their throats when they step on to the field at the FIFA World Cup in Russia. Coming from a country best known for baseball players, they will be overjoyed during their first trip to the World Cup. But they will also have one name on their minds: Amílcar Henríquez.

The 33-year-old midfielder had been playing for Panama in World Cup qualifying until he was shot to death.

“We always carry him in our minds and hearts,” Panama captain Román Torres told The Associated Press, remembering his slain teammate as a warrior who left it all on the field.

Henríquez was murdered in April 2017.

Authorities say Henríquez was shot several times by unknown assailants from a moving car as he was playing a pickup football game with friends in the Colon region on Panama’s Atlantic coast. One other person was killed and a third one was wounded. “His dream was to play a World Cup,” said Hernandez’s widow, Gixiani Pena. “He used to tell me: ‘God willing, we’re going to make it to this World Cup’.” The unsolved crime shocked Panamanian football. Many players from the small Central American nation hail from poor, violent neighbourhoods. At least 20 footballers, some of them retired, have been killed since 1990, according to official numbers. The most recent case took place on April 24, when former player Gilberto Salas was gunned to death in Panama City. Another player, José Luis Garcés, who was nicknamed ‘The Gunman,’ spent time in prison for injuring a person with a firearm.

HUMBLE UPBRINGINGS

The violence “is a reflection of our society,” said Gary Stempel, an Englishman who coached Panama and Guatemala. “These players from humble upbringings come from high-risk places.”

Henriquez was born in Colon, one of Panama’s poorest and most crime-ridden provinces. ‘Bob’, as he was commonly known, began playing in streets lined with trash and raw sewage.