Tuesday’s play in the semifinal round of World Cup 2018 qualifying in Concacaf ends when Canada hosts El Salvador and Honduras plays at Mexico. Canada must beat and Honduras lose to Mexico by acombined margin of five or more goals for Canada to overtake the Catrachos for second place behind Mexico.

To incentivize the Salvadorans, they say they were offered upwards of $3,000 perplayer by a Honduran businessman to produce a result that helps Honduras’ chance of progressing.

Salvadoran newspaper La Prensa Grafica named the businessman as Ricardo Padilla and quoted him as saying hethought there was nothing wrong with the offer as he was not asking the players to throw the game.

“Let them investigate, I’m not worried,” he said. “Those who want to see it assomething bad can see it that way and those who want to see it as something good, then they can too.”

In 2013, 14 Salvadoran internationals were banned for life for match-fixing.

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