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It’s also a situation where the offer to the El Salvador team has little chance of holding up. Canada may not be an attacking powerhouse but they’re still strongly favoured to win. On the other side of the ledger, the Mexicans are strong favourites to win at home vs. Honduras.

A Canadian win and a Honduran loss aren’t enough on their own for Canada to advance: they need to overhaul a five-goal differential as well. For example, a 3-0 win for Canada and 3-0 loss for Honduras would do the trick.

If El Salvador were to win, the offer said they would see $30 per minute played; a tie would have earned them $20 per minute, while a 1-0 loss was said to be worth $15 per minute. In a country where the average urban family income is just shy of $8,000 per year ($4,300 per year in rural families), that’s a lot of money. But the players said “no” anyway.

Photo by MARVIN RECINOS / AFP/Getty Images

The offer was made on Saturday at the team’s hotel in San Salvador by Salvadoran businessman and former president of Club Alianza Ricardo Padilla, the players said. Padilla told the players he represented a rich Honduran who wanted to be surehis national team advanced to the final round of qualifying.

Padilla has admitted to Salvadoran newspaper La Prensa that he made the offer, but insisted it was because the fans had already suffered so much and deserved to see their team do better. His offer of a “premium” might see them try harder and achieve better results, he figured.

Padilla said he didn’t care that some might think he was really just trying to fix the match, even given the recent history of the El Salvador national team: 14 players were banned for life in 2013 over match fixing.

British journalist Declan Hill has written extensively about match-fixing in soccer; he commented on Twitter that what he heard on the recording of the approach played by the players during their press conference was a “lesson in how to match fix.”