Diego Leon Osorio, a former Colombian national team player from the 1990s, was arrested for the third time on Friday for cocaine trafficking, authorities said.
On April 8, the former left-back attempted to board a flight to Madrid, Spain, from an airport near Medellin “with 1,849 grams of cocaine hydrochloride,” according to a message issued to the media by authorities.
Before making the arrest, airport officers discovered the cocaine in four pairs of sneakers.
However, police did not confirm the arrest until Friday, when a video of Osorio, who won league titles with Colombian club Atletico Nacional, was leaked to the press and showed him in handcuffs next to a uniformed officer.
The 52-year-old was previously arrested in 2002 while transporting cocaine in Miami but was released on bail.
In 2016, he was arrested again in Medellin and later sentenced to house arrest.
Osorio played for Colombia’s national team in the 1990s alongside the legendary Carlos “El Pibe” Valderrama and goalkeeper Rene Higuita.
At club level, he excelled at Atletico Nacional, winning two Colombian leagues and the Merconorte Cup in 1998.
Soccer and narcotics have been inextricably linked in Colombia, the world’s biggest supplier of the white powder, for the past four decades, with several players convicted for drug trafficking.
Anthony de Avila, the all-time leading scorer for Colombian club America de Cali, was arrested in Naples, Italy, in September 2021 for ties to the mafia.
Jhon Viafara, a midfielder on the Once Caldas club that won the Copa Libertadores in 2004, was deported to the United States for his role in a narcotics shipment to that country.