La H es Muda: What happened to Honduras?
One gringo's analysis of the continuous decline of the Honduran Men's National Team
One of the first rules I learned about Spanish pronunciation is that the “h” in the majority of words is silent. But, in Honduras, there is a saying when it comes to their futbol team: “La H no es muda” or “The H is not silent”. The phrase encapsulates the passion that Catrachos have for their team, “La H”. It was made even more popular ahead of the 2014 World Cup when Polache created a song around it (see below)
“Soy Catracho de corazón, y que al mundo no le quede dudas
En Honduras la H no es muda cuando juega mi selección”
“I'm Honduran at heart, and let the world have no doubts
In Honduras, the H is not silent when my national team plays”
Whether it was in the stadium, or with family and friends huddled around a TV, I have personally experienced the beauty of that phrase while watching Los Catrachos. Win or lose, there is a sense of pride supporting La H and cheering them on. Unfortunately, in the last year or so, I have observed La H es muda…The H is silent.
Like any passionate fanbase, there is a deep frustration and disappointment after failures - with some fans being very vocal. More recently, culminating in the failed 2026 World Cup qualifying campaign, I have observed something far worse. Indifference, numbness, and a hopelessness that permeates through the fans (those I know and those I see online). I don’t hear the cheers or the anguished groans…I don’t hear anything. La H es muda.
How did this happen? How did Honduras go from one of the premier teams in Concacaf to a team that failed to qualify for a third straight World Cup? It’s easy to look at what’s going on and assume the problems are just recent, and there are certainly lots of those, but this is a path that the team has been on for a while, even before the 2014 World Cup.
*Note: this analysis comes from a place of love. I am not from Honduras, but some of the most foundational experiences of my life occurred there and I care deeply for the country, the people, and of course, the national team.
Domination of Liga Nacional
There are a lot of arguments about parity in sports, is it a good or bad thing? I think futbol in Honduras would benefit from a lot more parity. Since 2010, there have been 30 Liga Nacional titles won. Only five have been won by teams other than Olimpia and Motagua.
While the Capitalino’s have long dominated the league, the recent performance (83% of titles since 2010) is another level of supremacy. If we compare to 2000-2010 (arguably the golden era of Honduran futbol), Olimpia and Motagua won 60% of titles and had tougher challenges from the big clubs from San Pedro Sula (Real España and Marathón).
Does a lack of parity in a league hurt a national team? Likewise, does increased parity help a national team? I would love to see the data on this (someone with more time and expertise than me should put together a white paper on this). For now, we can take it case-by-case. One of the most fascinating case studies on this is Bayern Munich’s dominance in the Bundesliga.
Germany reached the pinnacle of world futbol again in 2014 lifting the World Cup. What proceeded was one of the longest droughts for Die Nationalelf. Grouped in the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, a round-of-16 exit in the 2020 Euros, and a quarterfinal exit in the 2024 Euros as a host. During this run, Bayern Munich won every Bundesliga title from 2012-2023.
Correlation is not causation - obviously you could easily point to PSG’s run of titles alongside one of the best decades of performance in their national team’s history, but some in Germany have pointed to Bayern’s success as a detriment to the national team.
Last year, Bill Connelly wrote a piece for ESPN on Bayern about their dominance and their unique ability to concentrate power from a financial perspective. He also noted, “a lot of their success has come from using the Bundesliga as a personal minor league affiliate.” All this concentration at one club is not conducive for competition and development within a nation.
Back in 2015, then Borussia Monchengladbach sporting director, now Bayern Munich sporting director1, Max Eberl, was sounding the alarm about Bayern’s practices of signing young talent from other clubs and academies and the potential pitfalls of that for the nation, “If you harvest talents before they’re ready, I don’t know if that’s good for German football…Young players can also earn their stripes elsewhere and then go to Bayern, then the other clubs also benefit, because the transfer fees flow into the clubs behind Bayern….There are enough examples of talented players who followed the call and then disappeared into obscurity without ever reaching the top.”
From my perspective, this is exactly what has been happening in Honduras for the last decade or more, especially with Olimpia. While they have long been the premier team in Honduras, it was more common to see them bring in talent after players had established themselves at other clubs around the league. Recently, they have been increasingly bringing in young players from around the country before they reach the professional level with their clubs.
Unfortunately this had led to a lot of young talent arriving in Tegucigalpa and getting stuck in the academy or second team and their development is stifled due to a lack of first team minutes. A friend of mine likened it to students going to Harvard and then not being able to find an entry level job, leading them to not live up to that potential. For Olimpia’s part, they seem happy to take the risk and have the finances to do so regardless of the effects for the player or Honduran futbol as a whole.
La Ceiba isn’t what it was
Maynor Figueroa, Wilson Palacios, Victor Bernardez, Tyson Nuñez, Jerry Bengtson, Romell Quioto, Luis Palma…all players that are from or were developed in La Ceiba and the surrounding areas. Atlántida has long been a hotbed of talent for La H and outside of Tegus and San Pedro, it’s where the majority of players come from.
While the local clubs, Vida and Victoria, have never had sustained success in the league, they had always produced talent for the national team. More recently, outside of Luis Palma, there haven’t been many Ceibeños developed through those clubs breaking through into the team. Why is this?
One reason is what I alluded to earlier - over the last several years, young players from Ceiba are going to Olimpia and the other Gigantes and not getting into the first team there. Many get lost there. How many young players from Ceiba has La H missed out on because of this?
More than losing talented youth to other teams, La Ceiba is suffering from issues that go beyond the pitch. I’ll dive into this a bit more towards the end, but Honduras has been in a security and economic crisis for some time now and La Ceiba has been hit especially hard. After the 2009 Coup, gangs around the country filled the chaos and vacuum of power and their grip in La Ceiba tightened.
The violence has had very direct impact in the footballing community. In 2015, young rising star, Arnold Peralta, was shot and killed outside a shopping mall. Attendance gradually declined, especially for night games, because of this for Vida and Victoria. Outside of the professional level, it became quite unsafe for young players to play in leagues or play in the streets.
In part due to the violence, the economy of La Ceiba has contracted over the last few decades. The “Novia de Honduras” was once a place where Hondurans and foreign visitors alike frequented due to the beautiful coastline, mountains, and friendly Ceibeños. In addition to the increased violence, the city has been plagued by local government corruption, natural disasters, and crumbling infrastructure.
As you can imagine, this has an impact on futbol in the city. In August 2024, Vida withdrew from the the Honduran Futbol Federation citing harassment and persecution form the league. I don’t have time to get into all of that but in addition to those reasons, they were in economic crisis. They ended up settling a ~$750,000 debt with FIFA and registered for the second division where they now play.
Seeing the decline of the safety, economy, and the beautiful game in the city has been hard to watch for me personally. La Ceiba is one of my favorite places on earth. It’s where I met and fell in love with my wife, where I lived and learned Spanish, and where I became a fan of the Honduran national team. I have seen countless friends and family members leave the city for other places in Honduras, the United States, or Spain because of the economic and security concerns. It seems trivial to consider the sporting impact of these things given all of this, but it has touched every part of society, including futbol.
Transfers abroad misfire
The success of the national team in eras past has benefitted from players developing and starring overseas. Whether it was in Europe (Figueroa, Pavon, Palacios, and Suazo) or the MLS (Guevara, Boniek García, Espinoza, and Bengtson) La H was fueled, in part, from their talent playing abroad. In recent years, the volume of top players playing abroad has decreased and for those that have gone abroad, many do not feature regularly in their squads and their tenures are short-lived.
Post-2014, we had seen some successful moves for key players:
Romell Quioto to Houston then Montreal
Alberth Elis to Houston and eventually Bordeaux (we will forget the Boavista stint).
Luis Palma to Aris Thessaloniki then Celtic
Kervin Arriaga to Minnesota then Partizan/Zaragoza and now Levante
While successful for a period we have seen the Quioto and Palma progression stall with Quioto playing in the Saudi Pro League and Palma on loan in Poland. Unfortunately for Alberth Elis (the closest they have had to a superstar in recent years) Bordeaux never accepted transfer offers from bigger clubs and then he had that horrific head injury before returning to Honduras and now settling into the Portuguese second division.
Outside of the handful of successes, there have been many players with moves that have contributed to poor form or lack of games:
Choco Lozano bounced around Spain (Barca B, Girona, Cadiz, and more) before landing with Santos Laguna in Liga MX. He hasn’t quite found his home or his best form throughout.
Bryan Róchez went to MLS then Portugal and has fluctuated between teams in the first and second divisions and has struggled for form.
Michaell Chirinos had stints in the MLS, Greece, and Saprissa before returning to Olimpia.
Jorge Benguché was another victim of moving to Boavista and also stopped in the Uruguayan and Swiss leagues before returning to Olimpia.
Rigoberto Rivas was a regular in Italian Serie B before moving to Turkey. He now finds himself with a newly promoted team there.
This is not a critique on these players - I think they all made the best decision they could with the opportunities in front of them. I credit them for taking a risk and moving abroad to develop and grow, but unfortunately for many of them, the situations were not great and it is difficult to see how they can regain their form and help take Honduras to the next level.
There are only a handful of Catrachos currently playing in the MLS. When Honduras has been at their best, they have usually had a strong group of players making an impact in the United States. I would like to see more of the larger clubs (Olimpia, Motagua, Real España) do more business with the MLS. It goes both ways though, I think MLS teams have also seen the decline of Liga Nacional and haven’t brought in as much talent from Honduras accordingly.
Failure to recruit dual-nationals
Across the globe, dual-national recruitment is on the rise and Concacaf may be the epicenter of it. With Caribbean nations pulling from the diaspora in England, France, and the Netherlands and Central America bringing in players born or living in the United States and Spain, it is not uncommon to find the majority of a starting XI made up of players born or raised outside of the country they represent. Just look at the recent qualifying campaigns of Suriname and Curaçao!
The majority of Honduras’ dual-national base is in the United States and we have seen the team pull in a few players like David Ruiz and Juan Carlos Obregón, but not at the same rate that other Concacaf nations have been able to. The most prominent “one that got away” so far is Keyrol Figueroa, son of legendary defender Maynor Figueroa. He is continuing to perform well in Liverpool’s academy and for the USYNT. While he could still decide to play for Honduras at the senior level, it is still unlikely at this stage2. I wrote about this extensively here:
Recruiting these dual nationals requires people dedicated to doing so and that usually requires finances, but not always. Jon Arnold wrote about this a few years back that some of Guatemala’s efforts have been accomplished by a volunteer YouTuber from California. Within Honduras I have seen the success of the women’s national team’s ability to recruit and bring in dual-nationals. I don’t think La H could (or even should) try to fill out the majority of their roster with dual-nationals, but they need to increase their effort to bring more players into the fold.
Socioeconomic and security struggles
If we zoom out and try to look at all of this from 30,000 feet, I believe most of the issues the national team faces stem from the off the pitch issues already mentioned. Yes, complacency and politics in the federation are not helping, but the challenges are deeper. Economic crises and environmental disasters have been part of Honduras’ history since their independence in 1821, but if we just focus on the last 30 years it has been particularly challenging.
In 1998, Hurricane Mitch, one of the deadliest storms in centuries, set Honduras’ economy back decades. The 2008 Global Financial Crisis hurt remittances, and drove up unemployment and poverty levels. The 2009 Coup resulted in frozen foreign aid and a collapse in tourism. Droughts in the 2010s resulted in shocks to the agriculture industry. I saw firsthand how the COVID-19 Pandemic devastated the nation. In November 2020, two Category 4 hurricanes hit Honduras two weeks apart. From an economic standpoints, it has been one step forward and two steps back. Progress seems futile.
The challenges haven’t solely been economic or environmental. The 2010s saw a drastic increase in gang violence and femicide in the country, leading to some of the highest levels of violence outside of an active war zone around the world. Safety in most cities was hard to come by and the general population had to deal with a sense of insecurity and fear in their daily activities. “War Taxes” forced local businesses to close and displaced countless families.
An estimated 2 million people have left Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala for the United States since 2019. This mass migration out of the region creates a strain on the nation in many ways, and in the end, that will affect the progress and development of every industry in the country, including sports. The talent pool continues to shrink and many prospects are either leaving the country at a young age or they are now being born in other countries.
Where do they go from here?
Compared to ongoing issues like insecurity, corruption, violence, infant health, femicide, etc., these concerns about the national team are insignificant, in many ways. Perhaps the only reason it is worth mentioning in a discussion like this is the fact that La H has historically been one of the things in the country that can unify, excite, and rally a people facing so many hardships.
Is it just a superficial distraction? Maybe. But I have seen how this team can bring people together in the midst of turmoil. Back in 2009, after clinching a berth in the 2010 World Cup, Honduras was still reeling from the effects of a coup. At the time, captain Amado Guevara, shared with CBC:
“I hope the politicians take a lesson from what’s going on with the team, that Honduras is a country that can stay unified, regardless of any political problems going on…Here with the World Cup qualification, the people have gotten together, have put their faith in God ahead of everything else and seem to be getting an objective, which is unity. Hopefully the politicians can take a lesson from that.
It’s not that I was focused or not focused on the political situation and the problems that were going on back in the country, my motivation was winning the [El Salvador] game, not only for ourselves, but also for all Hondurans.”
As I write this, Honduras finds itself in the midst of another tumultuous election, compounded by meddling and interference from outside countries. My hope is that the resilient spirit of the Honduran people continues to shine and I know that those who want to create a flourishing society for all will continue to do the work regardless of the outcome. Maybe, just maybe, Los Catrachos could return to being a source of pride and unity for everyone!
In a rock bottom moment for the team, it is easy to ask, “is all hope lost for this team and this program?” Failing to qualify for the 2026 World Cup, and even make it to the intercontinental playoff, was not great and it should be a wake up call. Given that future World Cups will feature 48 teams, and even rumors of 64-team field in 2030 (please, no!), Honduras will continue to have chances at reaching the greatest stage in the sport.
If I’m honest, though, the federation shouldn’t be focusing on that end goal. They need to start from the ground up and figure out why the last decade has been such a struggle. The patterns of Honduran youth national teams competing at the highest level and going toe-to-toe with larger, more established programs, only for most of those players to never impact the senior team, should make them question their youth development process.
They need to look at the culture of the team and the setup to see why complacency, frustration, and even entitlement, has permeated the environment3. They need to bring in a coaching staff that can identify and develop young talent, inspire the core group of players that didn’t retire after this cycle, and determine what is missing. Easier said than done, I know.
They need to look at Liga Nacional and it’s current setup and honestly assess how it is improving or hurting the national team. They need to audit their use of the resources available to them, because a lack of funds in itself cannot be an excuse for struggles on the pitch when other Concacaf nations with less at their disposal like Suriname, Curaçao, and Haiti have found a way to make it work.
The excuses that the federation continues to throw around are landing on deaf ears. Haiti’s qualification for the 2026 World Cup, despite all the obstacles facing their country and the national team4, should put complacent federations on notice and inspire those same countries that they need to look beyond their limitations! I cannot wait to watch Haiti and root for their success in this tournament.
When a program, like Honduras, is in this situation, they are faced with a dilemma. To quote one of my favorite artists, Andy Mineo, “I got two choices, both require pain. One’s the pain of change, the other is the pain of staying the same.” Do you go through the long, and difficult process of change and trying something new. Or do you continue to deal with the frustration and disappointment of doing the same thing you have been for the last 10+ years? That will determine what the next decade looks like.
Despite everything discussed in the article, hope is not lost. That is one of my favorite things about this beautiful game, there’s always another match and always another opportunity. If the federation pushes for change and resetting the program, I’ll patiently be along for the ride, enjoying the ups and downs. If they continue down the same path, I will still reluctantly have hope that the next game is what will spark the turnaround. For now, La H es muda….but it never stays that way!
If you can’t beat them, join them?
His mother recently hinted that he could still play for Honduras one day. If I’m the federation, I am making that a priority
I’m not saying the players didn’t care. Of course they cared!
Check out this great piece from Jon Arnold and subscribe to Getting CONCACAFed
A real pity given the love and passion for the game over there. I guess the same can be said for ES and Nicaragua too?
Fabulous piece Jon. Very comprehensive. Forgive me if you've done this already, but I'd love to read your thoughts on Haiti, the situation there and how football is reflecting/rejecting/providing escape from it. I think they'll be the team everyone's routing for second.