Plenty of battles have been fought out on the pitch over the years, but some of those end up becoming more serious as they lead into actual battles, with one of those being La Guerra del futbol, or the Football War, fought between El Salvador and Honduras in July 1969. The conflict went much deeper than football though, with it being mainly caused by land reform issues in Honduras coupled with the emigration of thousands of Salvadorians into Honduras.
To give some background, in 1969 Honduras, much larger than El Salvador but with only half the population, was beginning to creak with the amount of economic migrants that were coming in from its neighbour in search of farmable land, with 20% of the population of Honduras at the time being made up of Salvadorians. But, with large private fruit companies putting pressure on the Honduran government for a few years previous a new land reform act was passed that had its roots in protecting the interests of The National Federation of Farmers and Livestock-Farmers of Honduras.
The law meaning that land illegally occupied by Salvadorian immigrants was to be redistributed to native-born Hondurans. The immigrants then being served with notice to leave their land with thousands of workers being expelled from Honduras, with even longer-term settlers being forced to leave the country as the mud-slinging began. The Honduran Minister of Foreign Affairs linking El Salvador produced Colgate toothpaste with an increase in cavities in the teeth of Honduran children, while the El Salvador authorities claimed that Honduran-made Glostora haircream caused dandruff.
Escalation of hostilities then became even greater in June 1969 as the two countries met in the second North American qualifying round for the 1970 World Cup. There was fighting at the first match between supporters in Tegucigalpa in Honduras, while the Salvadorian team were kept awake for most of the night before the game by fans with fireworks and whistles as a half-asleep El Salvador side lost 1-0 the following day.
A week later came the return fixture in El Salvador, with the tie rather bizarrely decided by points rather than goal difference, with a Salvadorian victory therefore necessitating a play-off match. Even greater violence took place in San Salvador around the game, with the Honduran side this time the men to have a poor night’s sleep. Like Honduras, El Salvador took advantage of home turf to romp to a 3-0 win and thus force a play-off match in Mexico City a week and a half later.
Before that game took place though the violence against Honduran supporters in San Salvador sped up the expelling of Salvadorians from Honduras, with paramilitary groups helping the government out as El Salvador broke off diplomatic relations with its near neighbour as border clashes began to occur. As for the play-off game itself, well that would be won by El Salvador 3-2 after extra time as around 1,700 Mexican policeman watched over just short of 15,000 spectators.
Two weeks later and concerted military action began as the Salvadorian Air Force took off for Honduras and the Salvadorian Army invaded over the border. Rapid progress initially being made into Honduras by the Army before the Honduran planes began to win the battle of the skies. Just days on though and the Organisation of American States met in an emergency session and demanded that the Salvadorians withdraw back into their own country. A ceasefire coming into force just four days into the invasion, although it did take the Salvadorians a couple of weeks to fully withdraw their forces and it also took over ten years to negotiate a final peace settlement.
As for actual football, El Salvador defeated Haiti, again via a play-off match, this time hosted in Kingston, Jamaica to book their place in the 1970 World Cup in Mexico. Little had the four day war mattered though for the Salvadorians given their results in the tournament as they lost 3-0 to Belgium, 4-0 to the host Mexicans and then 2-0 to the Soviet Union to go down in all three games without even scoring a goal. 4,000 people had died in just four days in the war however, with that being the more lasting memory for many.