{"id":31802,"date":"2020-01-06T16:00:58","date_gmt":"2020-01-06T08:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/malaysia\/?p=31802"},"modified":"2020-01-07T13:39:55","modified_gmt":"2020-01-07T05:39:55","slug":"that-one-time-a-football-match-started-a-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/football-tribe.com\/malaysia\/2020\/01\/06\/that-one-time-a-football-match-started-a-war\/","title":{"rendered":"That One Time A Football Match Started A War"},"content":{"rendered":"

In our review of the \u201c<\/span>5 Politically-Charged Football Matches that Turned into Madness<\/b><\/a>\u201d, we quite purposefully neglected to mention one particularly noteworthy series of football matches that resulted in two Central American (not Mexican) nations, El Salvador and Honduras, going to war with each other\u2014as in an actual war with tanks, boats, and planes.<\/span><\/p>\n

1969 El Salvador v Honduras<\/p>\n

The Backstory<\/b><\/p>\n

It was the middle of 1969, and while the rest of the western hemisphere was busy turning the Summer of Love into a muddy field of porta-potties at Woodstock, El Salvador and Honduras were engaged in a bit of tit-for-tat like a pair of cartoon characters.<\/span><\/p>\n

El Salvador and Honduras are two neighbouring countries in Central America (near Mexico) that both endured conquistadores, gained independence from Spain on the same day, and were still largely agrarian economies by the time they faced each other on the pitch in June 1969 to qualify for the 1970 FIFA World Cup (which was to be hosted by Mexico).<\/span><\/p>\n

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Salvador Mariona, a former soccer player for El Salvador, shows a picture of the national team during the 1970 World Cup.(Marvin Recinos \/ AFP \/ Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

The First Match (8th June 1969)<\/b><\/p>\n

Honduras was first to host and fans made full use of their home-field advantage by (allegedly) taunting the Salvadoran national team outside their hotel. The psychological warfare seemed to work, as Honduras won by keeping the sleep-deprived Salvadoran lineup to a goalless draw before scoring one goal in the final minute of the match.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Second Match (15th June 1969)<\/b><\/p>\n

With the shoe on the other foot, El Salvador took the opportunity presented in the second leg of the qualifying matchup to return the favour and up the ante. The Hondoran national team endured the same quality of restless sleep that was afforded to the Salvadorans, with the additional slights of flag desecration to humiliate the visiting team and disturbing propaganda (with the apparent suicide of Amelia Bola\u00f1os, a Salvadoran fan) to whip the home crowd into a frenzy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

By the end of the match, El Salvador trounced the visiting neighbour with a score of 3-0, and there were open hostilities in the stands. The Hondurans had to hastily depart the stadium under a rain of projectiles\u2014but the two teams still had the same number of points and a play-off was needed to settle the question of who would be going into the final round of World Cup qualification.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Third Match (26th June 1969)<\/b><\/p>\n

Being the smaller and more densely populated of the two nations, El Salvador\u2019s citizens had been migrating to neighbouring Honduras for generations, as people often do when in search of survival. Honduras, being the literal definition of a banana republic, had recently enacted land reforms that would have land taken from the Salvadoran migrants and redistributed to native-born Hondurans.<\/span><\/p>\n

Following the second match, Salvadoran settlers in Honduras reportedly endured a kind of mistreatment that bordered on genocide and eventually became even more disadvantaged migrants in their own country of origin.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Salvadorans at the country’s Red Cross HQ following their return from Honduras after the 1969 war CREDIT: ALFREDO QUANT\/AFP\/GETTY IMAGES<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Apparently as a result of the persecution suffered by its citizens in Honduras, El Salvador cut diplomatic ties with its neighbour on the day of the playoff match in Mexico. Things just got worse once the third match got underway, and what seemed to be yet another draw became, in extra time, a win for El Salvador.<\/span><\/p>\n