It was three in the morning when I got the phone call from Andres’ girlfriend Pamela to tell me he had been killed. My wife took the phone from me – I was speechless.

It still hurts my soul.

At the time, I think everyone involved in Colombian football felt the same way. We wanted to leave everything. Even the country.

But I had already been appointed as the next manager, to carry on to the next World Cup in France. We had to restart with a lot of pain. But also with that love of football, because it’s in your blood.

You love your country. And I loved the players of that era a lot. We were family.

I think one of the most important things I have ever done is to have lifted that team. To have got to the 1998 World Cup after that… well, it showed a lot of fighting spirit, self-esteem and pride.

“I took a roll of toilet paper and said only one thing to them: “Here it is. Wipe your arses because you are crapping yourselves””

Since those days, I have taken two teams – Ecuador and Panama – to the World Cup for the first time in their history. Both times, I got a call directly from the president of the federation, without involvement from businessmen or anybody else.

When the president calls you himself and says “I want you”, that’s important.

When I first arrived in Ecuador, we faced some difficulties in getting the country to love the national team. At the first few matches, insults were flying.

We also had to unite the group – both with each other and with the management – so that we could start to form a family.

I started to give the team the style we had in Colombia, formed a very similar group, and it worked well. We had a wonderful qualifying campaign for the 2002 World Cup.