RSL player played soccer in the Tokyo Olympic Games

Tokyo's normally crowded crosswalks, not so during the pandemic Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. Photo: Redd Epuq

TOKYO, Japan. — Douglas Martinez spends the rest of his year as a member of Real Salt Lake, Utah’s professional soccer league team in the Sandy stadium via the Herriman campus. For the past month, though, he could be found in Tokyo, representing his native country of Honduras in the global soccer tournament. 

Martinez, the forward, is leaving Tokyo now, his team having not advanced to the bracketed rounds of the Games. Their draw into Group B action found them losing their first match 1-0 to Romania, winning 3 – 2 against New Zealand, and finally losing 6 – 0 to The Republic of Korea. 

Team Honduras didn’t qualify to send a women’s national soccer team to the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games just like Team USA didn’t qualify to send a men’s national soccer team.

Honduras was represented in men’s football on four occasions between 2000 and 2016, missing only the 2004 Games in Athens. The team’s best effort came at the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro, where the Hondurans progressed from Group D and defeated the Republic of Korea 1-0 in the quarterfinals. Honduras then met a rampant Brazil in the semifinal, with the hosts claiming a 6-0 victory. Nigeria won the bronze medal match 3-2, but the fourth place is the closest any Honduran athlete or team has come to winning an Olympic medal.