The U.S. Men’s National Team’s loss to Honduras on Wednesday
generated a small wave of surprise and recrimination. Coach Jurgen Klinsmann has
come in for criticism
for showing either a lack of respect for Los Catrachos or a bit
of naïvete by playing a young defensive line with no cohesion. The surprise stems from the fact that while the Estadio Olimpico has been a difficult test for many national teams in the
recent past, it has not been so for the United States—Honduras’ only home loss in
the past two World Cup campaigns (2006/2010) was to the United States, which
had won three straight in San Pedro Sula prior to Wednesday.
In fact, the loss should—and has been—put into context: away
matches in the CONCACAF Hexagonal are always difficult, often due to the
atmosphere in the host country. Typically, away teams confront sleepless nights
defined by raucous crowds outside their hotels, see offensive graffiti on walls
lining the route to the stadium, and face heaps
of abuse—batteries and bags of urine, according to Jozy Altidore—at the
hands of local fans. Matches themselves are scheduled to maximize the home
team’s advantage. For Wednesday’s game, the
Honduran government called a national holiday in order to insure a packed
stadium and streets full of supporters, and scheduled the game at 3 p.m. to
maximize the mid-afternoon tropical heat. This is the case for all teams that
play in Central America during the Hexagonal.
But soccer—especially international soccer—is rarely just
soccer. Thus, the U.S. team often engenders more hostility
than others, a fact that U.S. media outlets never fail to report. In the
run-up to the February 6 match, however, journalists went beyond the usual commentary
on hostile crowds. Instead, they highlighted the difficulty of play in a
country as dangerous
as Honduras, noting the “bleak
picture of life in this beleaguered Central American country.” Another recognized that conditions in Honduras
were “much
worse” than the last match between the two teams in San Pedro Sula, played
months after a coup ousted democratically elected president Manuel Zelaya. (Of
course, social conditions tend to affect journalists much more than players,
who travel to and from the field under heavy police protection and are very
rarely victims of random
crime, but that is another story.) Telling the U.S. audience about crime
rates, however, does little more than set the scenario for the match and
reinforce two-dimensional pictures of Central American nations as violent.
Just as the U.S. loss needs context, then, so too understanding
conditions in Honduras can help explain why the U.S. team faces greater
hostility than other opponents. Even if U.S. soccer pedigree fails to inspire
fear in Central American fans, U.S. economic and political influence raises the
symbolic stakes in qualifying matches. Historically, from the mid-nineteenth
century filibustering expedition of William Walker to early twentieth century
occupations and late twentieth century support for unpopular governments, the
United States has played an outsized role in the domestic affairs of most Central
American nations.
In the specific case of Honduras, the heightened emotions
surrounding Wednesday’s match stem from more recent concerns. The short version
goes something like this: in June 2009 Honduran president Manuel Zelaya was
forcibly removed from power and flown out of the country by the Honduran
military. The U.S. government reportedly knew of the coup before hand, and in
the immediate aftermath blocked
the Organization of American States from suspending Honduras. It further legitimated
the removal of the president by supporting
new presidential elections. Since the inauguration of the new, more
pro-U.S. president, Honduras has become a focal point in the U.S. War on Drugs,
with increased funding and training for Honduran security forces. But this has come at a cost. Some claim that 40
percent of the Honduran police are part of organized crime syndicates,
while human rights abuses under the new government have skyrocketed. Indeed,
the spike in the Honduran crime rate coincides with the 2009 undermining of
democracy in the country. Little wonder, then, that Hondurans relish making the
U.S. team as uncomfortable as possible.
While—given the present climate—San Pedro Sula is likely the
hardest place that the United States will play in the Hexagonal, the team
should expect a similar treatment in Panama later this year. Even in Costa Rica
and Mexico, where U.S. interventions are farther in the past and
influence-peddling seems less obvious, U.S. players should expect extra
hostility. Soccer aside, the United States remains the regional hegemon. For
the U.S. sports media, mentioning why the
U.S. team is unpopular might help fans move beyond simplistic conceptions of
Central America as violent or unstable to a deeper understanding of the
politics at play in an international soccer match.
