Honduras taking on Australia for a ticket to Russia 2018 represents the biggest contrast you will ever find in contemporary soccer. If the swamp which passed as a football pitch in San Pedro Sula made terrestrial play absolutely impossible to both sides, expect Sydney Olympic Stadium's lawns to be the green carpet of an intercontinental, giant billiard pool.
Just three years ago, Jorge Luis Pinto, the Colombian mastermind behind Concacaf's most impressive display at a World Cup, when Costa Rica almost made it to the semifinals in Brazil, took a mystifying decision: chose the swamp over any billiard pool. He could've gone and coached in the affluent leagues of China and the Middle East, but opted for Central America, again.
People unfamiliar to the Concacaf confederation might not realize the many stereotypes frequently used at describing the Honduras national team. Unlike the well-regarded Costa Rica with its golden generation spearheaded by Real Madrid's Keylor Navas, La H ("The H", as Honduras is known) is often seen as a backward team highly reliant on a simple mixture of physicality and dirtiness.
For perhaps far too many in Concacaf, Honduras is unworthy of World Cups, but against all odds has rightfully qualified for the last two editions.
Stereotypes, however, sometimes are part false and part true. Pinto's countrymen who preceded him, Luis Fernando Suárez and Reinaldo Rueda, quite often emphasized how hard it was to implement a quintessentially South American game (El Buen Fútbol) with the available resources in San Pedro Sula and in the Honduran league. Like Suárez and Rueda, Pinto gave up aesthetics and embraced pragmatism. Pinto thus offers another contrast, one to Australia's coach Ange Postecoglu, who has arguably been imposing a system with little regard to his human material.
Pinto has resorted to flexibility, even to the point of getting rid of his own tactics, the ones which received international praise during the summer of 2014 (and which gave visibility to Central American football after decades of disdain). Having stuck to them during the 6-0 Honduran defeat to the United States in San Jose, California, he dropped his three-man defensive line and went back to basics: playing Australia home, it was all long balls for Anthony "Choco" Lozano, Carlos Ovidio Lanza and Romell Quioto."Espionage has arrived in football."— DW Sports (@dw_sports) 14 de noviembre de 2017
Did Australia spy on Honduras ahead of their crucial World Cup qualifying clash? According to Jorge Luis Pinto, they did. 🕵️🇦🇺 pic.twitter.com/I4bcW9xv71
Of course it produced a terrible, displeasing to watch game for neutrals. But Pinto's plan worked as Honduras preserved a most valuable clean sheet and also got cult veteran striker Carlo Costly a clear chance in front of Matthew Ryan in the second half. If the Pinto's plan preserves another clean sheet in Sydney and gets any of Costly, Lozano or Quioto another clear-cut chance, Honduras might stand a chance to achieve the unthinkable for a side as belittled as this: a third World Cup in a row.
Its' David against Goliath: The national team of a small Central American nation saddled with poverty, violence and migration against the national team of an advanced society in which almost everyone enjoys public access to practice quality sport.
If Honduras finally does it, Jorge Luis Pinto should be credited as the contemporary founding father of Central American football. Kudos to him.
