🇲🇽🇩🇪 Why Bayer Leverkusen is putting its focus on Mexico
The Bundesliga club is playing Toulca today in a friendly. I explain why.
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MEXICO CITY — Ticket sales in Toluca are good for tonight’s friendly as the Diablos Rojos welcome Bayer Leverkusen.
The German squad is fresh off a season that saw it finish third in the Bundesliga, securing a return to the UEFA Champions League even as it made it into the Round of 16 in the Europa League.
While fans are excited about the game (you can get a jersey in the team shop with the commemorative logo the club will be wearing tonight) and having a top European team in town, there does seem to be one question: Why is this game happening in the first place?
The principal reason is pharmaceutical company Bayer, which still owns the team, is celebrating the 100th anniversary of its presence in Mexico, with a large factory in Toluca. But there’s more behind the selection of Mexico than simply pleasing the parent company.
“The obvious reason is the anniversary of the Bayer company in Mexico and we're trying in the last weeks to benefit from each other, to use the the Bayer mother company but also have the company use our brand. I think that's the first (reason) it's a great thing we're here,” Bayer Leverkusen Director of Sport Simon Rolfes told me Monday.
“Then, North and South America are huge markets for us. We have a long history of Latin American players, Brazilians, Argentines, Chilean … for us, aside from Europe, the heart of football also is here, and that’s why it’s a perfect fit to get several things out of this trip.”
Typically when European teams talk about building a strong brand in North America, they’re talking about convincing fans in the United States to spend dollars on gear, attend watch parties and perhaps even make trips across the Atlantic to see their adopted clubs.
But in addition to the corporate tie, Bayer Leverkusen already has the advantage of having plenty of fans in Mexico who own the club’s black shirt, usually from the 2015-17 era when Chicharito was the team’s top scorer in consecutive campaigns.
Bayer isn’t turning its back on the U.S. market at all, with continued efforts to reach Americans on social media and a likely return for a tour in the not too distant future. But it also wants to leverage the brand recognition it already has in Mexico and make a market with a population of nearly 129 million feel like a priority.
It may take Bundesliga crowns or a Cinderella run in the 2022-23 UEFA Champions League for Bayer to break through as a truly beloved club in North America, but Bayer sees this Mexico tour as an opportunity to get back in front of fans who may not have had any sort of 'contact with the club - in person or even digitally - in several years.
For players, it’s business as usual in some ways, another match to prepare for and think about in what has been a season of constant preparation balancing the Europa League campaign with Bundesliga fixtures.
“It was a very long season, fighting in Europa League and after that fighting to get into the Champions League, which we were able to do. But, it was a tiring season with a lot of intensity in both the trainings and matches,” midfielder Exequiel Palacios told me Monday after a light session at Pumas’ training ground in Mexico City. “Now, we have this last little plus, which is playing this friendly in a responsible way, giving it everything so it will be a great show.”
Palacios will head from Mexico to join the Argentina national team in preparations for the “Finalissima” match against Italy at Wembley Stadium in early June, but none of the Bayer players seem at all put out by the postseason detour.
“Honestly, the team is really happy to celebrate Bayer’s 100th anniversary. We’re really happy to be in Mexico, and it’s going to be a great game,” Piero Hincapié said.
While the fixture with Toluca (which will air free in the U.S. on TUDN’s streaming platform Vix) is the only match, the club also is combining charity work with tourist activities, visiting an orphanage founded by former DFB president Egidius Braun in Queretaro after Germany was based there during the 1986 World Cup. The team also is set to check out the Estadio Azteca, take a balloon trip over the pyramids in Teotihuacán north of town and hop on boats in Xochimilco.
Bayer doesn’t have a Mexican player to serve as tour guide, and there haven’t been any Mexican players in the Bundesliga since Carlos Salcedo left Frankfurt in 2019 to return to Liga MX.
Plenty of Bayer executives would love to change that, and not just from a marketing perspective. In a news conference, Bayer manager Gerardo Seoane made a not-so-subtle reference to Real Betis winger Diego Lainez as a player he’d love to have on his squad.
But Rolfes echoed the same issue so many sporting directors have run into after their scouts highlight a rising Mexican talent.
“It's quite difficult because they’re already on a lot of money here,” he said. “Mexico's players are different sometimes to prospects in South America, where young players really want to go abroad, they want to go to Europe, to get better contracts, for sure, but also to play Champions League and get that competition.
“Mexico is quite different because players are earning a lot and there’s not such a need to go abroad.”
That may be changing, with Liga MX and the governing body for the Bundesliga and 2 Bundesliga signing a Memorandum of Understanding earlier this month. Details are vague as to how the partnership, which aims “for both sides to further intensify and strengthen their collaboration,” will actually function.
What’s for sure, though, is that Bayer hopes this match against Toluca will lay another stone down toward the club to continue to rise in popularity in Mexico and also make the contacts on the sporting side that could help it convince rising stars Bayer is right for them.
Then, fans here could finally upgrade their Chicharito shirts and put a new name on the back.