Ninety minutes of football hurt as much as twelve years of war.
In the early 1980s, at the beginning of what would become a 12-year-long civil war, El Salvador's talented football team was one national institution upon which both the left and the right could agree. When the team pulled off a stunning 1-0 upset against Mexico and qualified to compete in the 1982 World Cup, it was a high point for the tiny country's national pride. Unfortunately, the team's Cinderella story devolved into a nightmarish farce.
