Naples. A fugitive from Italian justice for 17 years, but in reality he had never disappeared from the world of South American football, on the contrary.
Through his Facebook page he continued to keep alive his past as a Colombian football champion and his participation in two World Cups with the South American national team and his present as a passionate fan of his favorite team: America de Cali.
And it was wearing the America jersey that Antony De Avila Charris, alias El Pitufo, the Smurf, was found and arrested in Naples yesterday by the police.
He was tracked down near Porta Capuana, in the heart of Naples, by agents of the Vicaria Mercato police station in Naples. He must serve 12 years in prison for criminal association aimed at drug trafficking, an investigation between Naples and Genoa that led to linking the name of the Colombian champion to the Buonerba clan of Naples.
In 2009, when he ended his career with America de Cali – where he had played from 1983 to 1987, then from 1989 to 1995, with a brief stint in the USA with the New York MetroStars – De Avila 'el Pitufo' already had the heavy burden of drug charges on his shoulders.
Antony De Avila – among those called up by the Colombian coach for the 1994 World Cup in the USA and the 1998 World Cup in France – had already played on football fields, as a striker, and on those where it is cultivated.
A life with two faces, as emerges from an episode in 1997, recorded in the news, when el Pitufo dedicated a goal he scored with the national team during the match between Colombia and Ecuador, to the prisoners and in particular to two brothers considered important drug traffickers at the head of the Cali cartel.
Yesterday, he was still wearing the America de Cali jersey but he went from the alleys of Naples to prison as the narcos who must serve 12 years in prison for drug trafficking with the clan.
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