Football War

The Football war is almost an invisible topic to people which took place on 14 Jul 1969-18 Jul 1969. The Football War was a brief war fought between El Salvador and Honduras in 1969. These 2 countries loved Football; so much that they went to war over it.

El Salvador, even though being the smaller country had a larger population than Honduras that mostly consisted of farmers. So in the 1960s around 300,000 illegal immigrants crossed over the border of El Salvador to Honduras. in 1963 a man who had just become president of Honduras started harassing the immigrants and started to send them back to El Salvador.

Then came around the 1970 Football world cup and both the countries qualified top int their matches. They had to play 3 matches against each other and the first one was in Honduras. The night before the first match Hondurans gathered around the hotel in which the Salvadorian team stayed and made noise and taunting them. The next day the tired Salvadorian team lost because of the lack of sleep, the score was 1–0.

The next match took place in El Salvador and how the tables had turned, this time the Salvadorians did the same thing as the Hondurans did, and the next day they were defeated. In response to the defeat, Hondurans beat up the Salvadoran settlers and terrorized them.

The last match would decide who would go to Mexico to play the finals. it was close but El Salvador won knocking out Honduras out of the tournament. Because of the defeat, the situation of Hondurans beating up the Salvadoran settlers increased. El Salvador couldn't bear an immigrant crisis with the increasing population of its country and declared war on Honduras, which was known as the Football War or the 100-hour war as that’s how long it lasted.

On Day 1, the Salvadoran Airforce attacked the Honduran airforce bases and specific locations in the country. Day 2; The Salvadoran army sent soldiers through the border with light tanks. Then the Organization of The American states met a bit of a panic and decided the war between these two countries was a bad idea. After a brief stalemate, the Salvadoran army called their men back home. This was the Football war.