The greatest rivalries in sport: El Savador v Honduras and the match that started a war

Honduras and El Salvador clashed at the 2025 Concacaf Gold Cup. Photo / Getty Images

The Alternative Commentary Collective’s Agenda podcast is launching four special episodes under the “Versus” banner in which they examine some of the greatest ever sporting rivalries. This week we travel to Central America to look at a football rivalry that sparked a military war. The ACC’s series is powered by Bonds Chaffe Off Undies.

Week one: Auckland v Canterbury and the rugby rivalry that defined the 1980s

Week two: India v Pakistan and the most intense cricket rivalry on the planet

Week three: Yankees v Red Sox and the Curse of the Bambino

You know that thing where your favourite team loses and you say, “Oh well, nobody died”? It’s not always strictly true.

Football is the sport with a multitude of storied rivalries, from the sectarian angst of Glasgow’s Old Firm Derby to the class divide that fuels Buenos Aires Superclasico, enmity between clubs and countries is a huge driver of the sport’s popularity.

With that comes a dark side, with violence between groups of supporters, often known as ‘Ultras’ or ‘Casuals’, often grabbing the wrong sort of headlines. While ugly, they rarely progress to anything above street-level skirmishes that can be patched up with a few stitches and a night in the cells.

Then there’s El Salvador versus Honduras, 1969.

While many would need a map to pinpoint the exact location of these tiny Central American countries, the best place to start this story is Spain.

After Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas, the Spanish set about colonising the place and they did so effectively and ruthlessly, even by the standards of the day.

The occupation of the Americas lasted pretty much unabated through to the 1820s when, crippled by the costs of fighting the Napoleonic Wars, Spain couldn’t give the Central American isthmus the attention it needed in the face of a local populace hankering for independence.

What they left, however, was confusion, with the locals unsure of how and where they wanted to be ruled from. Some of the northern states folded into modern-day Mexico, Panama became part of Colombia and what came out of the chaotic middle part was effectively five extended city states, all very similar to, but suspicious of, each other: Guatemala (apart from a chunk that remained British Honduras), Honduras, El Salvador, Costa Rica and Nicaragua. When Panama divorced from Colombia early in the 20th century and British Honduras became Belize in 1973, it gave us the seven-state Central America we know today.

It had the potential to be a nice story, but the dominant lasting effect of Spanish rule was a gross disparity between the tiny minority land-holding rich and the poor. The term Banana Republic was coined because of the American-owned United Fruit Company’s oversized influence in Honduras. It left these states unstable, vulnerable to crime, revolution, military juntas and influence from regional and global powers. The region remained a tinderbox waiting for a spark.

The 1970 Fifa World Cup in Mexico was one of the best. Brazil, under captain Carlos Alberto, were awesome and beat Italy in the final 4-1 with a team full of players who needed only one name to seal immortality: Pelé, Tostão, Gérson, Jairzinho and Rivellino.

It was only 16 teams big, though, so qualifying was brutal.

As host, Mexico went straight through, which left 12 Concacaf (Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football) nations, including Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Costa Rica, competing for one spot.

The first phase was made up of four three-team groups, with the winners progressing to the next round. Guatemala and Costa Rica finished second in their respective pools and were gone, but El Salvador and Honduras qualified for the next phase where they were drawn against each other in what was effectively a home-and-away semifinal.

The simple facts state that Honduras won their home leg 1-0 thanks to an 89th minute goal by Leonard Wells, but El Salvador was too strong in their home leg, winning 3-0 thanks to a double from Juan Mon Rodriguez and another from Elmer Acevedo. There was nothing as crass as goal difference in those days, so a playoff decider was set for neutral territory in Mexico City to be played on June 27, 1969.

Before we get to that playoff, we have to zoom in and look at those matches. While every country in Central America is close to each other, Honduras and El Salvador sit side by side and the distance between capitals San Salvador and Tegucigalpa is about from Auckland to Rotorua, give or take. While the land mass of Honduras was five times larger than El Salvador, the latter had a significantly higher population — about 3.7 million to 2.6 million in 1970. This disparity meant a number of Salvadorans crossed the border to Honduras in search of work and land.

The universal seeds of frustration were sown. Land in Honduras was owned largely by the United Fruit Company (known today by the brand name Chiquita) owning most of the land and transport networks. The US company put enormous pressure on the Honduran government to protect its land from ‘squatters’. In 1967, land reform acts were passed that took land from Salvadoran immigrants and redistributed it to native-born Hondurans who had been railing against the idea of cheaper Salvadoran labourers taking their jobs.

The land was taken from Salvadorans regardless of their ownership or immigration status, and thousands were expelled from the country, so tensions between the two nations were simmering to a boil long before they were drawn to play each other.

The night before the first match, El Salvador’s players were harassed in their hotel and kept awake. When Honduras scored that late winner at home, it was too much for the Salvadorans in the crowd, who rioted and allegedly tried to burn the stadium down. In San Salvador, a young Honduran was reportedly shot in a drive-by when he yelled “Viva Honduras” in celebration.

During the return match, Salvadorans returned the compliment by beating tin cans and hurling projectiles at the windows of the hotel hosting the Hondurans. Before the game, a dirty rag was flown instead of the Honduran flag and the crowd hissed during the playing of their national anthem. After El Salvador won, trouble kicked off in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital. Shops owned by Salvadorans were looted, while cars bearing Salvadoran number plates were burnt.

The small exodus of Salvadorans from Honduras, however, overnight turned from a trickle to a flood as politicians and journalists in both countries started a propaganda war of vitriolic intensity.

By the time of the third match, the decider, about 12,000 Salvadorans had fled Honduras in less than a week. The night before the match, El Salvador cut off all diplomatic ties with their neighbour, claiming that “the Government of Honduras had not taken any effective measures to punish crimes which constitute genocide, nor has it given assurances of indemnification or reparations for the damages caused to Salvadorans”.

Only a little grainy, black-and-white footage of the decider is available on YouTube, but the match actually sounds like a bit of a cracker. El Salvador went ahead early through the reliable Juan Mon Rodriguez. Honduras equalised through Rigoberto Gomez. This pattern was repeated and the match went to extra time at 2-2. In the 101st minute, Pipo Rodriguez scored what turned out to be the winner for El Salvador.

As could have been widely predicted, the result didn’t go down brilliantly in Honduras, but this time the response was organised by the respective governments and their military wings.

Border skirmishes started happening in the immediate aftermath of the match. El Salvador fired on a civilian plane in Honduran airspace and claimed two Honduran platoons had crossed the border. The other countries in the region (collectively known as the OAS) were urging calm but there was to be no calming.

On July 14, less than three weeks after El Salvador’s football victory, the war began proper, with the Salvadoran airforce attacking Honduran airfields, while simultaneously invading with two regiments of ground troops. It was the first time the El Salvador military had ever been pressed into action and they seemed keen as mustard.

From Wikipedia: “On 16 July, in the only major battle of the war, Salvadoran troops led by Colonel Mario (“El Diablo”) Velázquez Jandres, reached and surrounded Nueva Ocotepeque. Following artillery barrages, Honduran forces retreated alongside civilians, leading to the town’s capture. Both fronts stalled later that day due to an ammunition shortage and increasing Honduran resistance.”

One of the last engagements of the war was a dogfight involving piston-engined fighters (WWII cast-offs) that killed Salvadoran Captain Guillermo Reynaldo Cortez, the highest-ranking casualty of the war.

On July 18, the OAS intervened, a ceasefire was called and the Football War, which Fifa prefers to be called the 100-hour War, was over. Casualty lists are unreliable. El Salvador claims it suffered up to 700 casualties throughout the course of the war, including 107 deaths, and official records state that Honduras suffered 165 casualties, including 99 deaths. The CIA, however, which was extremely active in Central America as the USA was terrified communism would take root, reported at least 1500 deaths, with the vast majority being civilians.

The legacy is complicated.

El Salvador made it to the World Cup where they lost all three games and didn’t score a goal. Twelve years later they qualified again and lost all three games again.

Honduras have qualified for three (1982, 2010 and 2014) World Cups and have yet to win a match or make it out of pool play, though they have drawn three of nine matches.

The consequences of the war were dire for El Salvador. Salvadorans in Honduras were displaced, but came back to a teeming country that had little capacity to house them. The social unrest led a decade later to the brutal Salvadoran Civil War in which about 80,000 were killed and another 8000 ‘disappeared’.

Both countries remain fragile, with large sections of the population living below the poverty line. Many have fled for better lives in the USA and many are now being sent back the other way as America cracks down on illegal immigration.

Football, in that context, seems trivial, but for a few weeks there it was impossible to say that it was only a game.