Honduras beat Costa Rica 2-1 on Sunday - and had plenty to offer their critics in the media afterward - to claim their third Copa Centroamericana and first since 1995.
The Copa goes largely unnoticed outside Central America, but it does provide a handy glimpse at the competition for World Cup qualifying. And from the perspective of Canada's main rivals it represents a great opportunity to battle-harden the B-team in a tournament setting.
But perhaps the most important repercussion of the Honduran victory is that it will save the job of manager Juan de Dios Castillo.
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Castillo had been ravaged in the media leading up to this tournament. (The entire Honduran team had really.) But standing outside the celebratory dressing room he told reporters that he'd had some special help.
"When God makes me a promise, I believe Him," said Castillo. "He told me that I was going to be champion and now I am very happy."
Whether God will also convince the directors at the Honduran federation to extend Castillo's contract - set to expire in February - is another matter. While there was much pre-tournament speculation about an eventual successor, this unexpected victory should at least buy him some time.
Divine intervention and redemption seemed to be the running theme among the Hondurans. Player after player painted the team as heroic victims who pulled through for the Motherland with the help of God, overcoming the doubts and criticism of just about everyone.
The squads for this tournament feature mostly domestic players or B-choice foreign-based ones, interspersed with some key cogs such as Honduran first-line keeper Noel Valladares (who played forward for Honduras at the 1999 PanAm Games in Winnipeg.)
Valladares shone in the semi-finals against El Salvador and was required to make at least 3 saves in final 20 minutes of the final after Honduras saw their 2-0 lead halved. For what it's worth, he was named "hero of the tournament" by 70% of fans responding to an online poll.
None of the teams at this tournament did anything spectacular, at least as far as I could tell. In the vastly unlikely event you participate in some kind of keeper fantasy pool for Central American footballers, eighteen-year-old Olimpia midfielder Alexander Lopez was singled out in some reports as a Honduran to watch for the future.
It's impossible to quantify the psychological benefit gained from actually winning something, no matter how insignificant that thing is. Images of players singing and dancing and spraying each other with booze while passing a trophy around a dressing room surely must have a positive effect on a national program. Moreso than simply playing a friendly, and certainly moreso than not playing any friendlies at all.
So I say this surprising victory perches Honduras as the preliminary favourite beyond Mexico and U.S. to do some damage at the Gold Cup - and extrapolating even more precariously - as the favourite to once again nab the 3rd Concacaf spot in the 2014 World Cup.