FootBiz newsletter #174: Why Mexico is the co-host this World Cup needed the most
A truly football-mad country got the party started yesterday. Thank the lord
Happy World Cup everyone! Yes, we made it and the focus can now shift to the football and maybe even who wins this whole shebang rather than the tiring conveyor belt of miserable stories about FIFA’s organisation of the tournament (we’re not even angry anymore, just disappointed).
Of course there was still time for a couple more. Those last few attempts to fully gouge the North American market before the games got underway.
In a move that was such a naked cash grab that David Sullivan probably wants to publish pictures of it, FIFA announced earlier this week that fans can pay $79.99 (plus tax) to have their name on the big screen during World Cup matches.
Give it a rest, lads.
For what it’s worth, if there were names being shown on the screens at the Estadio Azteca yesterday then I didn’t see them.
It was a genuinely great occasion, the third time in the last four World Cups that I’ve been lucky enough to be at the opener and, unless recency bias is polluting my brain, the best of the lot. There were familiar elements to Brazil’s opener against Croatia in 2014, in that it was a fervent host fanbase both proud and overwhelmingly excited to have the World Cup back on home soil. Russia 5-0 Saudi Arabia in 2018 was as odd as it sounds.
The thing that probably made yesterday feel a bit more special than 2014 was the Azteca itself. Rory Smith wrote a good piece on the historic stadium this week, highlighting FIFA’s lack of understanding (or simply common sense) in renaming it the Estadio Ciudad de Mexico for the month.
Now I have no issue with you not being able to call it Estadio Banorte, its official name for commercial reasons, as that’s fairly standard for a World Cup. And I also understand that you’re calling all the other stadiums by deathly boring names — Boston Stadium, Dallas Stadium etc — even when they’re not that close to those cities. But this is the Azteca. Carlos Alberto’s all-time great goal? Here. Pele cementing his legacy by winning the 1970 World Cup? Here. Diego Maradona’s Hand of God? Here. His subsequent goal which is considered one of the greatest ever scored? Also here. You get the picture.
As I wrote for The Independent last night: “what a crime to football that that final of this bloated tournament will take place at a soulless tin box in New Jersey rather than one of sport’s greatest and most historic arenas.”
Mexico City Stadium doesn’t quite have the same gravitas.
But enough about the stadium stuff, I am a stadium nerd and this was a bucket list moment. It didn’t disappoint.
The entire day was also a reminder that Mexico is the only host nation this time around that is — and this may upset some people, so I’m sorry — a proper football country.
Mexico is football-mad. It’s all people talk about here. You’d be hard pressed to find someone who doesn’t support a club and have an opinion. It is deeply ingrained in the culture, but curiously that isn’t a culture that tends to get exported that much. So people in Europe don’t really think about Mexico that much. More than a handful of British journalists have been in touch in recent weeks to ask about their chances of going far in the tournament and aren’t aware of many of the starting XI.
The most relevant question around this Mexico team is probably how far the home advantage can take them. Being a top seed also helps, of course, but this is a pretty average Mexican team with some of its best players sat at home watching on television having being left out of the squad by Javier Aguirre, who is an excellent coach but maybe not the best evaluator of talent.
Part of the reason not much talent gets exported is that there are a few mechanisms in place that ensure Mexican talent tends to remain in Mexico. For one, there is a rule that Liga MX clubs can only have nine foreign players registered in their squads for the season, just eight of those in the matchday squad and a maximum of seven on the pitch at any given time.
That creates a bit of a premium on the best Mexican players, while one of the biggest clubs in the country, Chivas, also has a policy of only signing Mexican players and thus further contributes to both the premium value and scarcity of the country’s best talent.
Chivas and Club America can pay European-level wages
Mexico’s relative financial strength also contributes. The biggest clubs in Mexico pay European-level salaries, and for young kids who grew up as fans of America or Monterrey, earning $100k per week and being a superstar in your own country often represents a more attractive option than going to the Dutch or Portuguese league and starting again from zero.
Cesar Huerta was on the bench for Mexico last night and his story is a familiar one. One of the best players in Liga MX, Huerta signed for Anderlecht last January, started about 15 games as he struggled with injury and is now allowed to leave after the Belgian giants once again fired their sporting director and coach. Huerta is expected to sign for CONCACAF Champions Cup winners Toluca, where he will earn more than he did in Belgium.
So Mexico falls into a similar sort of trap as the Turkish league, where the big stars often elect to stay at home, though the younger players who have grown up with greater access to European football on television or streaming are increasingly inclined to give it a go. The likes of Gilberto Mora and Armando Gonzalez, who both came on as substitutes vs South Africa, will end up at big European clubs.
Their next two games will be greater tests, though this nerve-settling win all but guarantees knockout football.
That avoids the biggest fear in the Mexican psyche, that of disappointing failure. Nobody expects El Tri to win the tournament but they want to give it a go, and put on something of a show.
Perhaps the football itself wasn’t a show in Thursday’s curtain-raiser, but the spectacle itself from the packed streets four hours before kick-off to the national anthem to the impromptu but wonderful fluttering cascade of sombreros, a circular cardboard cut-out provided by a sponsor to each seat that ended up creating its own aerial show shortly before kick-off.
Yeah, that was a great spectacle and everything the World Cup should be.
After so long hearing about everything it shouldn’t be, it really felt like something we needed. A football confessional at one of the sport’s great cathedrals.
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