From ESPN, you're listening to 30 for 30 podcasts. My name is Jody Avergan.

This episode, a story of scandal from South American soccer. When you talk about soccer in Latin America, you very likely think about Brazil.

Perpetual World Cup qualifier, five-time World Cup champion,

but this is a story about another team, a team trying to take down Brazil,

and it's about a series of escalating acts that look to upend the power structure throughout World Cup soccer.

We call it the Fall of the Condor.

It's a story we reported with help from the Spanish language show Radio Ambulante.

Our version is hosted by me.

I'm a poikido de Español in this, and it starts right now.

Welcome to Santiago, a typically South American scene.

Brazil have just come onto the pitch.

You can hardly see them. Well, you can now because the television camera has forged a way through.

They've been surrounded by photographers.

That's the way it always is, wherever Brazil play, especially when it's a World

Cup qualifier. It's mid-August, 1989, Santiago, Chile. Brazil and Chile are facing off for a

spot in the World Cup to be held in Italy the next summer. This would be the first of two matches,

one in Chile and the second in Brazil.

And if Chile could win here, they could go on to make World Cup history by becoming the first country to stop Brazil

reaching the finals. Brazil still remain unbeaten in World Cup qualifying games. That's an extraordinary record.

The stadium, the national stadium, was crowded.

Fulciano Borges is a Brazilian journalist who was in the stadium in Santiago that day.

An environment of tension, this is going to be a war, things like that.

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