The fans always lose when teams move
Morelia looks like it will be the latest Mexican city to be abandoned by its club.
Photo via @JoseLuisOrs7
Sorry, Morelia! It looks like you’re about to join a growing club that includes fan bases from cities like Veracruz, La Piedad, San Luis, Tuxtla Gutierrez, Mexico City (where Atlanta and Necaxa both left) and Puebla.
Monarcas de Morelia are strongly being linked with a move to Mazatlan to become ‘Delfines’ and play in the new stadium built there that has been looking to attract a tenant in the top two divisions.
Where does that leave Morelia, a city of nearly 600,000 that has supported the club for 69 years? Apparently (according to other rumors) in the second division after Tampico Madero moves to Morelia and takes on the Monarcas’ identity.
Sure, there have been protests in Morelia, dozens took to the center of the city despite the current pandemic, and there’s a Change.org petition, but how much power do the fans have? We’ve seen this before. When the owners make a decision, there’s rarely any changing. They think they can make more money elsewhere, and, thing is, they’re probably right.
So, maybe it should be “Sorry, Tamaulipas!” the state home to Tampico and Madero, where the stadium straddles the dividing line between the the two cities. Tampico Madero’s first season in the Mexican Primera was back in 1945 - though the current iteration is a reboot with around 40 years of history.
Either way, someone is losing a team, and it’s another frustrating chapter in a long book of teams picking up sticks and seeking greener pastures, leaving their fans with nothing (or something different but often worse) to cheer about.
Monarcas may not be the last to move, either. Rumors persist another team (Puebla? Queretaro?) could be playing in new digs when the 2020 Apertura starts in just a few months.
There is a strain of fan who sees this as part of the “MLSification” of Liga MX, but Liga MX’s domination of MLS in terms of franchises moving, disappearing, swapping licenses and generally breaking supporters’ heart is matched only by its Concacaf Champions League record.
The last time an MLS team wanted to move, the fans’ efforts to keep the team in the city worked. The Columbus Crew are getting a sleek, new stadium downtown, Austin is getting an expansion team formed by the wantaway ex-Columbus owners and everyone is happy. One MLS team moved in the history of the league, and years after decamping for Houston a new San Jose Earthquakes re-emerged years later. Three teams have gone defunct, with two of those markets getting shiny new replacement teams with better ownership groups many years later.
Liga MX fans have gotten used to this. Often teams pop up again in the same way the Quakes did (or the Charlotte Hornets or whatever).
Sometimes, though, they never come back. FC Juarez, who enjoyed a strong start to the now-canceled Clausura, joined Liga MX in summer 2019 after acquiring the first-division license of Puebla-based Lobos BUAP. It was a more straightforward swap than what at the start of the century when La Piedad and Irapuato disappeared and Queretaro and Veracruz somehow kept existing or what happened in 2013 when Queretaro was relegated but then Chiapas’ team moved to Queretaro and took on their identity and San Luis moved to Chiapas and took on Chiapas’ old identity.
It’s not a competition about which league is worse about moving, though. This is a nasty habit North American clubs in all sports have.
Especially in Mexico, so much has to do with the government. Who is paying for the stadium, who is getting revenue from matches? Who pays to turn the stadium lights on, to hire security, to secure parking facilities? So often the answer to those questions determines whether or not a club can be viable in the long run.
Remember that we’re in the minority. Those of us who read everything about soccer, who can tell you owner, technical director and player in one league, maybe more, we’re not the normal ones.
Most people want to go to the stadium or watch the game on TV and see a good team. Even in cities like Morelia or San Luis Potosi, only a small percentage of people are going to be able to tell you the typical starting XI. They don’t know if the government funds the team or not. (There is a photo I find charming that often circulates of two ladies playing cards during a Morelia match, but they’re there, they paid to get in the stadium, they bought shirts of different vintages and I’m sure they’d prefer the home team win).
What they can tell you is that they enjoy the team in their city, that they like flipping on a game and watching it with their friends, that they’ve called themselves a fan for decades. When that disappears, they’re left in the lurch.
It might not be as bad were things to be spelled out clearly. Instead, we learn everything through innuendo, rumor and reports. Very little is confirmed until it’s been rumored for so long people just accept it as fact. It’s a way of going about things not only in Mexican soccer but in Mexican business as a whole that can flummox outsiders.
You’d think even the insiders would consider a change. The chairman of Grupo Orlegi, which owns Santos Laguna, Atlas and Tampico Madero, Alejandro Irarragorri, once was seen as a young fresh-faced reformer in Mexican soccer, now is blamed for anything that threatens to slightly change the league. When a dozen Santos Laguna players tested positive for COVID-19 (all asymptomatic), conspiracy theorists said it was another ploy from Irarragorri to get his way. Why would he want the season shut down? Maybe because Atlas, the other first-division team the group currently owns, was at the bottom of the relegation table, but it’s all a bit murky.
Irarragorri does have ideas and a long-term plan, but in typical Mexican soccer fashion, those plans are shrouded in secrecy. Were he to come out and explain his intentions, what he wants Liga MX to look like, why he feels his group should have multiple teams in the first (or first two) divisions, how he sees his involvement in the future, perhaps there would be a more reasonable climate around the 49-year-old.
Maybe it works out in the long run for fans in Morelia. Maybe the next version LAFC or Inter Miami is a Monarcas reboot, with those bright, vibrant colors and the overachieving spirit brought back to Morelia. Maybe they’ll be in the first division soon, since, you know, we still don’t even know what the second division will look like. Maybe we’ll get used to it and almost forget Cruz Azul moved to Mexico City and Necaxa isn’t originally from Aguascalientes.
Right now, though, who could blame Morelia fans for the feeling of bitterness and rejection they feel?
“I’ve always felt that the ownership is what gets in the way of the team’s success more than the actual players,” a Morelia fan wrote to me this week when rumors started to circulate they’d be losing the team.
Whether the owners, management or players who held Morelia back in the past, one thing is certain: When teams leave, it’s the fans who always lose.