🇲🇽🇺🇸 After 14 years, what does it mean for Guadalajara to host El Tri?
The city is ready to welcome the Mexico national team for the first time since 2010.
Reporting from Guadalajara
How should we contextualize how long 14 years is? Should we do the thing where we talk about who the president was and what the No. 1 song was at the time? Maybe we note that a few players who will be on the field for Tuesday’s friendly between Mexico and the United States were five years old or 10.
Point is, things are a lot different now than they were in 2010. We’re all older now. The world is different.
Tonight at the Estadio Akron, Mexico will play a match in the Guadalajara metro area for the first time in 14 years.
“It’s a joy to have the national team here,” Juan Manuel Figueroa, who covers soccer in Guadalajara for MedioTiempo, tells me. “For a while, we felt that we needed more time with the national team here in Guadalajara. Here and Monterrey are some of the best places for soccer in the country. We did think we needed to see the national team more.”
Tuesday could be the start of more visits for Mexico. In addition to being one of three sites in Mexico for 2026 World Cup matches, Jalisco governor Enrique Alfaro Ramírez has put political pressure on directors to bring the national team to one of the country’s largest cities.
“It’s a good option for the national team to be able to have a match with a big crowd without needing to do a lot of promotion or even give away tickets,” says Omar Fares, a journalist with Cancha who has covered sports in Guadalajara for more than three decades.
“Also, of course the good relationship Chivas owner Amaury Vergara has with people in the the Federación Mexicana de Futbol - above all Ivar Sisniega who was a director with Chivas from 2002-2005 and a friend of his late father Jorge Vergara - helps,” Fares continued. “That adds to the good relationship Amaury has with Jalisco’s government.”
The city’s population of more than 1 million and 5 million in the metro area, including Zapopan where the Akron technically sits, loves the sport. They support their teams, Chivas and Atlas. Yet, visits from the national team have been infrequent.
Having a national stadium like the Estadio Azteca - one that sits just a few miles from a modern training center and in a city that has many more direct international flights - means it can be difficult to put matches anywhere else. And the Azteca is not just any stadium, either.
“For many years, there has been this idea - a type of myth - that Mexico was unbeatable in the Azteca because of its imposing structure or just being the ground that holds the largest crowd,” Fares said.
Fares also noted that despite beginning play in 1923, the men’s national team didn’t play in Guadalajara until late 1993, functionally ignoring “La Perla de Occidente” until a friendly against Brazil at the Estadio Jalisco - even though the stadium hosted eight matches of the 1970 World Cup and seven matches of the 1986 World Cup.
Tuesday night’s sold-out match will provide a logistical test for organizers ahead of the four matches it will host, including a Mexico group contest. Yet, there’s little doubt the stadium itself is up to the level necessary to host big international contests.
“You can put it up against any stadium in the U.S. or Europe,” Figueroa said. “I think it’d be good to get fans used to having the national team here more often.”
That’s easier to do at the moment with the Estadio Azteca under renovation in preparation for the matches Mexico City will host at the 2026 World Cup, but there are plenty of other cities in Mexico with many fans, good facilities and a desire to see the team that represents them.
“Mexico wants to see its national team,” El Tri manager Javier Aguirre said Tuesday. “It’s been years since we came to Guadalajara. It had been a while since we played in Puebla. Morelia asked us to go there. León, Juarez, they want to see their national team.”
That’s harder to do when Mexico plays five matches a year in the United States. Since the last time it was in Jalisco, El Tri has played 13 times in Arlington, Texas’ AT&T Stadium and a dozen times between the Rose Bowl and Coliseum in the Los Angeles area. Some of those contests were in tournaments like the Gold Cup in which Mexico doesn’t pick where it plays, but many were friendly contests.
“They don’t come here because of economic interests,” says Antonio Espinoza Gonzalez, a deliveryman who supports Atlas. “Fans in the U.S. go to those games and pay in dollars. Here the economic capacity isn’t as strong. Those of us here who are middle class or lower class can’t pay as much for a ticket. It’s a really high cost, and we can’t afford the luxury.”
Espinoza said even if he could easily afford a ticket for the match, he would prefer to participate in a boycott of the current directors and the way they’re running the national team.
Still, he thinks it’s strange Mexico hasn’t visited the city in more than a decade. “It’s a different soccer culture here,” than other places in Mexico, Espinoza tells me. “Whether it’s Chivas or Atlas, players here have a lot more contact with fans than in other places. I’m an Atlas fan and when a loss hurts us, they feel that hurt, too.”
Guadalajara may not have done itself any favors in the past. In that 2010 match, the stadium had large sections that were totally empty. The team didn’t play well either, falling 2-1 to Ecuador.
“I think sometimes the Tapatio fan base hasn’t responded. There have been games that haven’t captured the attention strongly,” Figueroa said. “This time, though we’re going to see a full Estadio Akron because fans in Guadalajara love soccer and like to see the national team here in the Perla Tapatia - especially Chivas players, and historically Atlas with Rafa Marquez, Andres Guardado who developed at Atlas.”
Guardado will start the rivalry contest Tuesday, as Mexico pays tribute to the legendary midfielder who retired from the international game.
He will finish his career having played 180 times for Mexico, doing so just twice in his hometown in a 19-year international career.
No matter how you put it, it’s a very long time.
How does the Mexican press see Tuesday night’s matchup? I did a quick paper review from Guadalajara
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I hope the crowd gives them 20 minutes before they start booing