Death threats made to Real Madrid star for being injured

Being injured is a drag. Nobody likes to be injured.

Being injured is particularly cumbersome when some in your country have decided that you’re faking it, or being soft, and should be threatened with death. Colombia captain and superstar, and Real Madrid player James Rodriguez pulled out of his national team’s World Cup qualifier against Uruguay on Tuesday.

The left calf injury had ruled him out of last Thursday’s Paraguay game as well.

Many Colombians were not best pleased, and began the #JamesVerguenzaNacional hashtag, calling James a national disgrace for committing the grievous crime of getting injured in the line of professional soccer duty. They seem to feel that James should play through the injury and has generally not performed well enough for his national team of late.

An account apparently based in Buenos Aires but since suspended sent threatening direct messages to James’s mother on Twitter. One suggested that she would soon find him dead. Another that the sender was coming over to her house to kill everybody she loved. One of the messages included a picture of some pistols, a box of bullets and a note that said the Legion Holk, a band of controversial internet trolls, was watching him.

Rodriguez’s mother, Pilar Rubio Gomez, reported the threat to police.

On another account, a guy who seems to enjoy posting pictures of a hand holding weapons, also threatened James.

This is all bad enough in its own right, but it’s worse still when you consider the context here. Colombia’s recent history of violence suggests that such threats aren’t necessarily hollow. The tale of Andres Escobar being murdered in the wake of his own goal for Colombia against the USA at the 1994 World Cup – which eliminated his home nation, once a favorite, in the group stage – is well-known.

That doesn’t make the threats credible per se, but it does mean they need to be taken seriously.

Get well soon, James.