MEXICO CITY — Iván Velo, a fan of the Mexican national soccer team, plans to hurl a homophobic slur at Sunday's World Cup qualifying match against the United States — a common jeer at soccer matches here that FIFA wants stamped out and threatens to sanction Mexico for allowing. Velo, a 22-year-old nanotechnology student, claims not to be homophobic. He said he merely has a special person in mind for the chant: President Trump, rather than just the opposing players.
“It’s for the president, for everyone, but with more motivation now for the president,” Velo said Thursday while ordering a sandwich outside Estadio Azteca before Mexico’s 3-0 defeat of Honduras.
Politics, unpleasantries and unhappy histories between the countries have a way of invading U.S.-Mexico matches. Trump's plan to build a border wall and his reference to Mexican migrants — part of the national team's massive fan base in the United States — as "rapists" and robbers only serve as the latest insults in a string of off-field distractions between bitter soccer rivals.
In a match after the 9/11 attacks, Mexican fans notoriously chanted “Osama!” at U.S. players and taunted them as “¡Hijos de Bush!” (the sons of then-President George W. Bush.) U.S. fans responded with their own chants of “Remember the Alamo,” and by hanging Davy Crockett posters before a 2015 friendly.
But the rivalry — like relations between the neighboring countries — can be complicated. Many Mexicans admit to admiring the U.S. team’s steady rise to respectability, and there is an increasing fondness for all things American among the population of a country that has moved away from anti-Americanism as a political prop over the past 25 years.
Many fans and vendors around Estadio Azteca on Thursday seemed to separate Trump from the United States as a whole and from the U.S. men’s national team as its representatives, pledging to keep any anti-American sentiment in check and to avoid booing during the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” before Sunday’s match, which will also be played at the famed venue.
“With all this talk from Trump … it’s the salsa on the tacos,” said Juan Carlos Ávila, a teacher, using a Mexican slang phrase meaning to spice up something.
Some fans seemed nonplussed by the topic of Trump, and preferred to complain about domestic politics instead.
“I have more problems with our own president than the U.S. president,” said Víctor Labra, a medical student trying to buy at ticket to the Mexico-Honduras match.
Mexican fans seldom spare any affection for their northern neighbors on the field. Their team has never lost a World Cup qualifier on home soil against the Americans and enters Sunday's match leading its six-team regional qualifying group for the 2018 World Cup in Russia. The Americans have rallied from embarrassing consecutive losses early in qualifying — in Costa Rica and at home to Mexico, after which Jurgen Klinsmann was replaced as coach by Bruce Arena — to move into third place after Thursday's 2-0 defeat of Trinidad and Tobago outside Denver.
It’s a far cry from qualifying for the 2014 World Cup. El Tri, as the Mexican team is known in honor of its three-color uniform, reached via a two-game playoff — but only after the U.S. team kept its archrival’s hopes alive by beating Panama on a last-minute goal by Graham Zusi.
That goal brought chants of “U-S-A” in Mexican neighborhoods, tabloid headlines of “THANK YOU!” and memes devoted to “San Zusi.”
“People don’t like to say it, but we’re grateful,” Esteban Illades, editor of the Mexican magazine Nexos, said of the Zusi goal.
With the U.S. program moving from also-ran to perpetual regional power over the past two decades, Mexican fans have developed a begrudging respect for their rivals. Still, they talk traumatically of a string of 2-0 losses to the U.S. squad over the years, the most painful of which eliminated Mexico from the 2002 World Cup.
“‘Dos a cero’ — two-zero — “is something Americans chant to make us mad,” Illades said. “It still works.”
The end of Mexican dominance stirs mixed emotions. “We’ve never really had anything to lord over them, save football,” Illades said.
“It’s a very civilized rivalry, without violence,” said Diego Petersen Farah, a columnist with the Guadalajara newspaper El Informador. “It’s the only sport we beat the U.S. and it was a pleasure to play against them. They later started beating us and fun was over.”
Others see nothing but upside for Mexico having a strong rival and wish the Mexican Football Federation would take notes.
The U.S. program is “very professional and develop infrastructure and schemes for having better players and coaches and invest in long-term projects,” said Juan Carlos Ladrón de Guevara, an engineer and oft-frustrated fan who admits to musing that Mexico missing the World Cup in 2014 would have spurred needed change.
Even with the U.S. team regularly beating Mexico, Americans playing professionally in Mexico say they were welcomed warmly south of the border, though ribbed from time to time.
“You hear ‘gringo’ a lot, but you prove yourself, you endear yourself to teammates and the fan base. You’re gringo but you’re their gringo,” said Herculez Gómez, a former member of the U.S. national team who played professionally in Mexico for several years and is now an analyst with ESPN.
“The vast majority of Mexicans were very caring, welcoming, understanding and generally curious. They like to talk about players,” Gómez said. “I heard a lot about Landon Donovan.”
Donovan, the all-time leading goal scorer for the U.S. team, tormented Mexico throughout his international career. Still, he starred in a popular Mexican sports lottery commercial, in which he tried to sneak into the country but was sent back across the border — letting loose an insult as he left.
Fans at Estadio Azteca often mentioned Donovan, though impolitely. “I’d like to kick his butt all over town,” said Jorge Limón, a fan from the western state of Jalisco.
It was a rare outburst. Mexican fans like to say they welcome anyone with open arms to Azteca, even Americans.
“Americans are well received here. They’re not harassed or beat up. There’s nothing more here than a sporting rivalry,” said Jorge Flores, who sells souvenirs from a tent outside the stadium. As proof of the lack of anti-American sentiments, he pointed to a Trump T-shirt emblazoned with a vulgarity.
“It doesn’t sell very well,” he said. “Soccer jerseys sell much better.”
