PANAMA CITY, Nov 11 — On a patch of overgrown, yellowing grass in a crowded San Salvador neighbourhood, 12-year-old Bryan Oliva dreams of becoming a professional footballer.
Hundreds of kilometres away, in a remote Honduran village, 11-year-old Darixon Rivas harbours the same ambition, training on a muddy pitch after finishing his chores on the family farm.
For both boys, the odds are stacked against them in a region where football is struggling to escape the past, starved of investment and increasingly left behind by its rivals.
“You can earn a lot of money (as a football player), but I don’t feel like it’s possible for me,” Oliva told AFP in Zacamil, a densely populated neighbourhood of apartment blocks in the Salvadoran capital.
