 |
| That first Soldier looks like Robbie Fowler |
Salvadorian soldiers
Honduras and El Salvador's 1969 World Cup qualifiers sparked. The so called The Football war The fighting only lasted 100 hours before a outbreak of sanity brokered a truce. But killed somewhere between 2,000 and 6,000 people.
THE GOVERNMENTS WERE DEFIANTLY USING FOOTBALL TO INCITE
Before the first game, held in the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa on June 8 1969, the El Salvadorian side were kept up all night by riotous fans outside their hotel. They went on to lose 1-0. When the goal was scored – after about 10 minutes of injury time – one El Salvadorian lady back home reportedly shot herself through the heart. She was given a televised funeral, intended to whip up nationalist fervour before the return fixture a week later.
For the 2nd leg the El Salvadorians took the chance to repay Honduras’s inhospitality. As soon as the Hondurans arrived at the airport, Their star striker Enrique ‘The Rabbit’ Cardona,was the target with posters of him being sexually assaulted by a considerably larger rabbit. Other posters showed anyone vaguely black in the Honduran side with a bone through their nostrils.
quoted Cardona,
“I was used to that kind of stuff, but I could see my team-mates were upset,”
Then on the Friday before the game, the El Salvadorians killed two people outside our hotel. We went to stay in the Embassy instead.”
A 3-0 pummeling followed The team coach was quoted as saying. “We’re awfully lucky that we lost. Otherwise we wouldn’t be alive today.” The results left both countries’ hopes of becoming the first Central American side to qualify for the World Cup hinging on a deciding third match, to be played in Mexico City.
According to the El Salvadorian coach at the time, the Argentine Gregorio ‘Goyo’ Bundio, the whole team was called to the president’s house before the game. “He gave us some sweet bread and soft drinks and told me that – as a foreigner – I had to defend the national colours, because this match was for our national dignity”.
An estimated five thousand Salvadorians had travelled to the game, some doing the 770-mile journey on motorbike. El Salvador twice took the lead, but Honduras drew level, thanks to build-up from Cardona. In the second half, Bundio told his defenders to deal the striker in the only way they could.
Cardona. QUOTED
“They kicked me off the pitch!”
“I got a boot right in the chest. I’ve played in Spain, in England, in Ireland, and it’s never happened to me since.”
Honduras’s attacking threat was blunted, and right at the death Mon RodrÃguez headed El Salvador’s winner.
SO THAT WAS THE EXCUSE THE GOVERNMENTS NEEDED
They triggered their people into war Ryszard Kapuscinki spent some of it with a Honduran soldier who was more interested in collecting dead men’s shoes for his family than obeying orders. “We soldiers didn’t have a clue,” says another Honduran veteran, Jose Luis Gutiérrez, who lost two relatives and a close friend in the war. “Only later did it come out that they’d be planning it all along. We went to war not knowing what we were fighting for or why. They just told us to defend the national sovereignty.”
El Salvador, with a better-prepared military, had dreamed of extending its tiny territory right across Honduras to the Atlantic. Nonetheless, six days after the invasion, its forces were bogged down a few kilometres from the border. So the two governments signed up to a truce, and limited their future disagreements to minor skirmishes and major court cases.
At most, the qualifiers were the straw that broke the camel’s back. “They abused football. They took advantage of us,” complains one surviving player about the politicians of the day. The countries’ real squabbles were very much off the pitch. Hundreds of thousands of El Salvadorians were living in Honduras illegally and, to the fury of El Salvadorian government.
SO FOOTBALL IS FOR THE PEOPLE!!! WHEN GOVERNMENTS GET INVOLVED THINGS GO BAD!!!
