The day Honduras shook the empire

Standing in the way of a place at next year's World Cup finals tower the United States, a colossal player in north and central American football, and the options are stark - a win guarantees Honduras qualification for the first time since a debut finals appearance in 1982, while losing puts the matter out of their control.

Much bears down on the minds of Hondurans right now. Four months since the democratically elected president Jose Manuel Zelaya had a gun put to his sleeping head and was forced out of the country to be replaced by a brutal military regime, the country remains bitterly divided.

Last Saturday, at least, those divisions were less obvious to see.

Seven hours before kick-off in Honduras's second city San Pedro Sula, the roads refuse to move. It's swelteringly hot and humid but a dark cloud on the horizon looms large.

"It always rains on match day - it's a good thing," my friend Johan tells me after travelling from the northern island of Utila, five hours away, to join another 40,000 people in the Estadio Olimpico.

Johan doesn't like to talk about politics, football is far more important to him. But, beyond the confines of the car and our conversation about Honduras's star player - Tottenham's Wilson Palacios - it's difficult to escape.

San Pedro Sula is Honduras's economic powerhouse, generating two-thirds of the country's GDP. Bananas once ruled in the city, but, after Hurricane Mitch devastated many of the plantations in 1998, the city turned to clothes weaving for its work.

All the big brands are here, their big bold slogans plaster the roads and buildings, but unsurprisingly given this concentration of big business, shady practices have emerged.

Countless high-profile cases in the US concerning child labour and sweatshop conditions have plagued the industry, but in a country that has rarely tasted democracy and where the benefactors, the corporations, have enjoyed such free rule, little changes.

Nowhere in the city is the divide between the haves and have-nots clearer than the main highway that runs by the stadium.

Look right and the houses, sparkling new imported Humvees and lush gardens bulge forth.

Their neighbourhood looks like it has fallen straight from a Hollywood real estate pamphlet. Except, that is, for one key difference - the walls.

Each house or block of luxury apartments has one - perhaps it would be suicide for a rich Sanpedrano not to - but they stand tall and imposing, some rimmed with barbed wire, others with an electric fence. All offer a reminder of what's on the other side of the road.

And it is here, to the left, just a stone's throw from such ostentation and wealth where we begin to understand the reality of the country's political dimensions. Tumbling down a hillside, the destitution and squalor isn't easy on the eye of a Westerner.

Little more than a few planks of wood and a sheet of tarpaulin make for a house, half-starved kids kick a rag across a patch of mud and a woman looking beyond her years pulls a pail of dirty water.

Such extremes, it's the class system exposed on the bare bones of a six-year old boy trying to sell me cigarettes at a traffic light. His skin stretched tight like clingfilm across his ribcage and his face daubed in dirt. He has no shoes and scurries back and forth at the window of every waiting car.

Hundreds like him mass round the stadium selling anything they can - beer, pizza, face paints, infuriating duck horns and the like. I find it hard to think what else gets sold. The hostel I have just travelled from in the northern port of La Ceiba warns from its dormitory walls that having sex with children is illegal.

But, after a four-hour wait to enter the stadium, the Honduran heart beats as one - for 90 minutes.

Honduras have won every single one of their home games in the final qualification groups, impressively seeing off Mexico, Costa Rica, El Salvador and Trinidad and Tobago, and the first half shows what a good side they are. In no other pairing between the two countries - the imperialist empire and the impoverished central American "banana" republic - could the poor tease the rich with such delight. The half-time score reads 0-0, but there is little doubt who is on top.

And, just minutes into the second half, the stadium erupts. A sea of hands punch the air as Julio de Leon curls a free-kick past the US keeper - Everton's Tim Howard. The explosion costs Johan his half-time tortillas - he's oblivious - as is the elderly man who plants a kiss on my "gringo" forehead.

But football can be such a cruel game and minutes later US striker Conor Casey outmuscles Honduran keeper Noel Valladares to loop the ball into the net for the equaliser.

It's his first goal in 15 starts for the US and, on 65 minutes, he grabs his second, playmaker Landon Donovan sliding him in for a neat finish from 20 yards.

It's a devastating blow for the Hondurans after having dominated for so long and, when Donovan converts a 20-yard free-kick to make it 3-1, Honduras's South African dream appears to be falling apart.

Time then, for some divine intervention, and so when de Leon scrambles the ball home for a glimmer of hope, he rips off his shirt to expose the message "Jesus is my love."

It leaves Los Gringos with 12 minutes to cling on, their World Cup hopes in the balance also.

All appeared set until the referee, perhaps swayed by 40,000 Hondurans, pointed straight to the spot for handball.

Who better then than national hero, all-time leading Honduran scorer and with 36 years of experience Carlos Pavon to salvage a point and in the dying minutes too?

Pavon, tiptoeing towards the most important football he would ever kick, blazes over and alas the chance is lost.

The Yankees have somehow stolen a 3-2 win and qualification. For Honduras, only a win in El Salvador on Wednesday night and a hope that Costa Rica don't snatch victory in Washington can guarantee qualification.

Perhaps though President Zelaya, holed up in the Brazilian embassy with a cordon of military thugs encircled outside, already knows the script.

Last week, he announced a deadline of the same day for his restoration as president.

And what better time for the former rancher turned president to return to his people on the same day that Honduras joins football's elite?

Whatever happens on Wednesday evening, for Hondurans there's a lot at stake.