Offering two-for-one tickets and free entry to anyone who kept the physical ticket of the last time Mexico played at the Estadio Cuauhtémoc in 2007, the Mexican national team prepares to host La Liga's Valencia in a friendly game on Saturday night.
The Mexican Soccer Federation is doing everything it can to avoid seeing the bleachers in Puebla, Mexico, resemble the scene of El Tri's last two games in Los Angeles and Dallas. Two places where El Tri usually feels at home were abandoned by its fans, painting a brutally honest picture of the sporting crisis the Mexican national team has been immersed in since the start of the decade.
Mexico was once the undisputed king of CONCACAF, with traveling fans that packed the biggest stadiums in North America and the world. Now, this deeply soccer-loving country has fallen out of love with a national team that's continuously failed to deliver them anything other than defeats and embarrassing eliminations in the biggest international competitions.
The domination of the region is a thing of the past, Mexico are winless against the USMNT in its last seven meetings. In the 2022 World Cup, El Tri failed to make it past the group stage for the first time in 44 years. Last summer's Copa América was a chance to return some credibility to the national team; however, Mexico scored one goal in three games and once again were eliminated in the group stage of a major international tournament.
It feels like forever ago when Hirving Lozano fired a shot past Manuel Neuer to score the game-winning goal against reigning champion Germany in the opening match of the 2018 World Cup. What's happened since are a frustratingly high number of poor decisions that have left El Tri in shambles, lethargically wandering toward a World Cup it will co-host in less than two years.
The reasons are many and start at the top. Liga MX owners abolished relegation and promotion in the league in 2020, meaning players and teams no longer feel pressure to perform every single week to avoid finishing last in the standings. Owners along with the Soccer Federation also decided to stop competing in the continental Copa Libertadores in 2016, passing on the chance to continue to play against the biggest teams in South America. The decision to also stop sending the national team to play in the Copa América from 2016 until its return to the competition this year caused even more confusion.
Decisions like these have made Liga MX stagnant. Yes, financially clubs have continued to grow, but that in part has also generated another problem: young and exciting Mexican players are usually sold within Liga MX and not sent to Europe. Instead of following the lead of MLS and most South American leagues, Liga MX clubs ask for significant fees to sell its young talents. Former Mexico manager Gerardo "Tata" Martino said that Mexican players don't go to Europe because teams don't let them.
"The fees they ask for them (players) are exorbitant," Martino said. Mexican winger Uriel Antuna was pursued by European clubs that reportedly were willing to pay $3.5 million for the player. Cruz Azul wanted double that and last summer Liga MX club Tigres reportedly paid around $8 million for Antuna, keeping him in Liga MX for the foreseeable future.
The lack of ambition domestically extends to the players as well. Young Mexican national team players are comfortable in Liga MX where they'll be paid better and have security when it comes to playing time compared to Europe. Clubs and players are both to blame for seeing less and less Mexican talent competing in the European elite.
The consequence? Mexico is finding it very difficult to replace the older generation of players that led the team in the 2014 and 2018 World Cups. A generational change is something fans have wanted for a while and former coach Jaime Lozano obliged and left players like Guillermo Ochoa, Hirving Lozano, and Raúl Jiménez out of the Copa América squad. As a result, it became evident that the new generation of players aren't as competitive—at least for now—as previous ones. Mexico cannot force a generational change when the senior players it's trying to replace are still better than the new ones coming in.
Javier Aguirre is back for a third time as manager of El Tri, once again trying to lift up a team in need. He's Mexico's fourth manager in less than two years and has a tall task in front of him to try and navigate the challenges that his predecessors were unable to deal with.
Unfortunately for him he'll also have to deal with the abandonment of a previously patient fanbase that's had enough.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as How Mexicans Fell Out of Love With Their National Team.