El Salvador’s national team footballer shot dead

Independent

A former El Salvador national football team player has been shot and killed by gunmen at a petrol station.

Alfredo Pacheco, who played for the small Central American country from 2005 to 2013, was approached by unidentified assailants in the city of Santa Ana early on Sunday, according to the Attorney General’s office.

Pacheco became club captain of one of El Salvador’s biggest teams, FAS, in 2005, and represented the country 86 times – eventually becoming its most-capped player.

He also played for Metapan and Aguila, and had a loan spell at New York Red Bulls, as well as for the El Salvador national team.

In 2013 he was one of 13 members of the national team who were banned for life by the Salvadoran Soccer Federation in 2013 – a punishment ratified by Fifa – for match-fixing.

The troubled South American country, which borders Guatemala and Honduras, saw its highest murder rate in August this year since the 12-year civil war which ended in 1992.

Thirty murders on average were taking place a day, according to the National Forensics Institute.

The country’s police have estimated that 80 per cent of homicides relate to rivalry between the country’s gangs, The Guardian has reported.

Police did not provide a motive for Pacheco’s killing.