Football in Honduras

Association football in Honduras is a national sport. It is the most popular sport among Hondurans, becoming popular in the 20th century.

Honduras has memorable performances in three World Cups, Spain 1982, South Africa 2010, and Brazil 2014. The nation also competes in the Copa America, UNCAF Nations Cup, Olympic Games, and in FIFA U-20 World Cups.

In the territories that are now Honduras, the Mayans in Copán played the game of Pok-ta-pok in fields within their cities. The game used a ball of rubber. This sport was practiced in the 1000s AD, and it was a predecessor of basketball and football.

There are many accounts of how association football started in Honduras. A newspaper owned by the family Ustariz (French descendents) was delivered by a French ship, staffed almost entirely by an English crew. It arrived on the coasts of Port Cortés in 1896, bringing with them many soccer balls, which they used for fun in their free time every time they came to Honduras. The practice of this new sport attracted the curiosity of the inhabitants of the port, who saw how the English sailors had fun playing football. These sailors encouraged the Hondurans to learn the game, and play along with them.

Luis Fernando, a son of French immigrants, recorded that some merchants in Puerto Cortes had given him a football in 1896, and that football was played in Honduras since then. In 1906, the republic's government hired a Guatemalan professor named Miguel Arcangel to teach football at the Escuela Normal de Varones in Tegucigalpa. Three years later, the Spanish monk Niglia introduced the game at the Instituto Salesiano San Miguel in Comayagua.