USA vs. Mexico: An unfriendly situation

Tonight - Wednesday, Feb. 6 - in Houston, TX, USA, the US Men’s National team will play Mexico in what has become a recent tradition. The teams schedule a “friendly” early in the year before a time of major preparation for events like a CONCACAF tournament or, as with this year, World Cup qualifying.

The usual refrains:
1) Vague: It’s just a friendly, but more than a friendly because it’s USA and Mexico.
2) Practical: Anytime you pit the two strongest teams in a region against each other, you get something more intense than a mere friendly.
OR
3) Ominous: It’s *never* a friendly when it’s USA vs. Mexico.

Sadly, #3 is the most appropriate. The reasons should be obvious. Mexico was the dominant power north of Brazil from the dawn of time until recently. The US has dominated Mexico in the recent past. Relations between the two countries at a national level are not good. The dynamics within the US on a regional level are heated. Etc.

I’d like to focus on one particular aspect of this rivalry - the atmosphere and context of the games themselves. I recently traded posts on a soccer website regarding the fact that except for a VERY few places within the United States, whenever the US plays Mexico, it is an AWAY game for Team USA. If there are 60,000 in attendance, you can bet that 45,000 or more are there cheering for Mexico (or more! - I’m using the typical estimates professional analysts use. If you want exact statistics for each game, go look them up yourself).

The problem with this is not that it shows that soccer still isn’t considered one of the top sports in the US - though that’s true.
It’s not that soccer organizations don’t market themselves and their games very well to a market that would be pro-Team USA - though that’s also true.
And it’s not even that the US sports media goes out of its way to marginalize and ridicule or ignore soccer whenever it can - though that is certainly true (15 seconds of patronizing coverage for a soccer game 40 or 50 or 60,000 fans attended).

The most disturbing thing is NOT that there aren’t enough US fans there to give the team a HOME game in Houston or DC or Phoenix or LA - - the most disturbing thing is that the fans cheering for Mexico and against the US are often not from Mexico.

What you find at any game in which the US plays a team from anywhere south of Brownsville, TX is that the enormous crowd is made up of Mexicans, Hondurans, Nicaraguans, Panamanians, etc. And if you attend one of these games, it’s clear that the crowd is rooting at least as much AGAINST the US as for Mexico or Honduras or Guatemala or whomever. First or second generation Mexicans living in the US? Makes sense. But a Panamanian or Nicaraguan living in the US?

Now before you say that it makes sense for any Central or South American to root for Mexico over against the US, ask yourself: on what basis?…and is that basis rooted in something that should be accepted or even encouraged?

During this exchange on the soccer website, I wrote:

The really bizarre (and sad, I think) part of this is how many people show up to root against the US and for ANY Spanish-speaking team. That is…the Guatemalans or Hondurans who show up to root FOR Mexico…or Costa Rica..or anyone else..and strongly AGAINST the U.S.

I saw this dynamic first hand at a 2002 qualifier at RFK Stadium (very much NOT the Southwest) in D.C. Enthusiasm reaching violence against the U.S. team and fans by people who were not from the opponent team’s country. I see the same thing on televised broadcasts of other international games.

As I can’t imagine living in, say Sweden, for decades and yet making a point of rabidly supporting Scotland or Ireland or even England against the Swedes, the whole dynamic is disturbing (it’s not like Mexico and central American countries are buddies..think Costa Rica/Nicaragua!).

The response I got back was from someone defending this scenario claiming that it was just because the US hasn’t earned real soccer respect from any Latin American country…and that once we proved we could beat Mexico in their home stadium in Mexico City, “Azteca,” then we’d start to see crowds shift.

My response was:

It is ridiculous to explain Nicaraguans rooting for Hondurans or Panamanians violently supporting Mexico against the US as if it’s “part of the learning curve.” It’s not about respect…and even if it were, why does respect=a win at Azteca and not wins in Houston, LA, etc. with pro-Mexico crowds? A win in the World Cup doesn’t count more than a friendly at Azteca?!?
We’ve earned respect by beating them over and over and over including a tournament championship game and a World Cup elimination game. The onus should be on Mexico to prove why they deserve respect when they can ONLY win at home!

And while we’re at it…let’s not skip over their “home.” Azteca where the pollution is so bad our players cough up tar during warm ups and the crowd, again, let’s not forget this, chanted “O-sam-a!” soon after 9/11. That’s the environment Mexico needs to be able to beat USA…and that’s something that gets them respect and devotion from fans from other countries?!?

Since every soccer standard has been met, I don’t see any other way but socio-political to explain why non-Mexicans who live and work in the USA for decades would, as I said, root against the US and enthusiastically for Mexico.

To the disgraceful “O-sam-a!” chant, add the juvenile and shameful behavior of the Mexicans after recent games when they refused to shake hands or exchange jerseys with the US players after losing, (and the non-soccer insults like Mexico City audiences booing, repeatedly, the Miss USA contestant) and you merely add more reasons to explain why they do not deserve the support of soccer fans in the US who are not Mexican.

The big point here is that there are plenty of serious soccer fans living in the US - in many cases, several generations. Certainly enough to give the US team a HOME game more often than not. The fact that a second or third generation Costa Rican will show up at a USA-Mexico friendly and cheer every Mexican fake and boo an American goal cannot be explained in soccer terms, nor can it be explained by a shared language.

At least in the context of soccer, you can’t blame the US for creating a political problem. After all, they’re the AWAY team, remember?

This entry was posted on February 6, 2008 at 3:37 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.