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Football here isn’t a hobby, it’s a form of ID. Tell a Colombian where you’re from and they’ll skip the small talk and name a player or a club from your country, usually before you’ve finished the sentence. In Medellín, one of the bigger attractions is going to a match and living it from inside the crowd, everyone in the famous yellow. Barranquilleros are famous for being diehard fans of their Junior F.C. team. Even Chiara Ferragni has been roped into the fanfare. And in Cartagena, a match day stops the city cold, as if the tropical rains had arrived early.

So before we tell you where to watch in Cartagena, here’s a little context, enough to hold your own when the gentleman beside you starts shouting at the screen.

Five Things To Know About Colombia And Football

• We hold the record for the only goal ever scored straight from a corner kick at a World Cup. Marcos Coll, 1962. A record that, by its nature, can only ever be tied. He did it once and quietly retired the category.
• The Scorpion Kick was essentially an accident. Goalkeeper René “El Loco” Higuita invented the move (a forward dive, ball flicked away with the heels) while filming a soda commercial. He then practiced it in private for years before debuting it against England at Wembley in 1995. Most people rehearse a toast. He rehearsed defying gravity, just in case.
• James Rodríguez owns the year 2014. Six goals, the Golden Boot, and a chest-and-volley against Uruguay so clean it won the Puskás Award for goal of the year. The kind of goal that makes a nation briefly forgive a man anything.
• For five years we ran the richest league on earth, by accident. Between 1949 and 1954 a paperwork dispute put Colombia outside FIFA’s reach, so our clubs simply paid the world’s best players, Di Stéfano among them, enormous tax-free salaries, no transfer fees. The single recorded instance of bureaucracy improving football.
• And then there’s El Cole. A superfan who has spent over twenty years attending matches dressed as a full eagle – beak, wings, feathered suit – and has, on occasion, been hoisted on strings to hover above the crowd. A man who looked at face paint and found it insufficient.

By the way – when someone finally scores, you won’t need a translation. The television emits a single, uninterrupted goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool lasting somewhere between fourteen seconds and a minor medical event, the commentator visibly running out of oxygen, and every human within a two-block radius simultaneously loses the ability to sit down.