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Football is war

EditorialFootball is war


Historians later agreed that the war was not really over nationalist sentiment, but because of existing tensions between the two countries over the fact that Honduras had decided to evict Salvadoran peasants living in the borderland that El Salvador shared with Honduras.


Honduras wanted to distribute the land to Honduran peasants, but El Salvador?s military leaders were concerned that the returning peasants would begin calling for reform, which, if not met, would possibly lead to guerilla movement.


During the second qualifying round for the 1970 World Cup, held on July 14, 1969, tensions between the two nations came to a boil, and the Salvadoran army launched an attack against Honduras.


Eleven years later, Honduras and El Salvador signed a peace treaty on October 30, 1980, to put the border dispute before the International Court of Justice.


It is against this backdrop that Belize played El Salvador in the first match on Sunday in the Carl Ramos Stadium in Dangriga, and beat their national Under-21 team 2-0.


The odds were that we should never have achieved such a feat. Football is not worshiped in Belize. Our sports officials have historically returned from extremely embarrassing performances and, with grins, announce that the experience was ?good for us, and we learned plenty.?


Sportscasters who attended the match in El Salvador on Wednesday have reported that sports officials there ?opened the gates? for the citizenry to attend the match. The only paying patrons, we were told, were those who wished for reserved seats.


The intent was obvious ? to rally as many of the fans as possible behind the national team, which needed to feel that the honor of their country was at stake, after having been humiliated 2-0 in Belize just days earlier. In the contest of money vs nationalism, nationalism won.


If it was the MCC Garden, Carl Ramos or anywhere else in Belize, for that matter, money would have won.


When the Salvadoran team returned home from their loss in Dangriga, they were severely criticized for being beaten by Belize, who is a ?nobody? internationally where football is concerned.


Whereas the Salvadoran team ?got the sense? quickly, the Belizean team probably believed that the team it faced in Belize would be the same team it would face in the Cuscatlan Stadium in the El Salvador capital – San Salvador.


Belizeans have to understand that in Central America, among our macho Latin neighbors, English-speaking Belize is considered an outsider. Yes, we trade, but we are not ?hermanos,? you understand.


Therefore, when Belize steps into the sports arena, none of the referees will blink. Consciously and instinctively, the calls will go to our opponents. We have to be twice as good, just to be as good.


Belize football officials did not anticipate that we would be facing riled-up fans looking for nationalist redemption and soccer nirvana, biased officiating and highly-motivated opponents.


This is something that Belize?s sports bureaucrats have to understand. To be competitive internationally, we first have to succeed in regional competition, which means we have to beat countries like El Salvador, a country that succeeded in using a football incident to start a war.


International football isn?t a sport, and has never been. It?s war. Get the sense!

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