El Salvador vanquishes Panama to go to next round of World Cup qualifying

Last Sunday, El Salvador's national football (soccer) team came from behind to defeat Panama 3-1 in a game played in San Salvador. La Prensa Grafica has coverage, as does Peace Corps Volunteer Laura who was at the game. You can also watch this video of highlights from the match.

By winning, El Salvador moves to the next qualifying round with a round robin tournament including Haiti, Suriname and Costa Rica during the fall. The top two teams will then advance to the final round of the CONCACAF World Cup 2010 qualifying tournament.

Also circulating on the Internet is a video of Mauricio Funes in attendance and supporting the local team. The video shows large groups of fans apparently spontaneously breaking into applause at the site of Funes. Not to be outdone in support of the team, president Tony Saca awarded a $1000 bonus to each member of the winning national team.

Comments

Anonymous said…
he he he...i thought it would be good you blogged about this game. i happened to read a cartoon by ruz on el diario de hoy and it makes striking sense on how people forgot about all their problems for a day when the national team won. if i were the ARENA govt. of el salvador, i would invest in the national team so they can make it to the world cup. think about it, it would cause a great deal of hype among people, people would talk about it and "forget" a little about the daily national issues. at least it would be a way to market el salvador to the world, if they play at the world cup their games would be viewed by thousands on the international scene and perhaps those games could spark some interest for an unknown country. then market it as a tourist destination. idk, sounds too good to be true. but a good national soccer team in a soccer hungry nation could actually work miracles!
2:41 PM
Hodad said…
Go El Salvador!!!!

chinga culos panama
yeh...... Salvador
10:03 PM
Anonymous said…
i'm surprise saca hasn't done more for futboll giving his sports radio depth
1:12 PM
Anonymous said…
I'm so glad that someone was interested the game as I was. I must admit that both of my parents are from El Salvador but it's hard to support the national team when there really isn't much to support lol. I hope El Salvador can invest more into it's national team since other nations put a lot of effort towards their national teams. Well Yea!!!!
For El Salvador.
6:22 PM
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