H Waldman Basketball

Mexico vs The United States: Where's the Rivalry Headed? Part III

You read before the USA version of the story in Matthew’s part I and II (click on them to read them, if you haven’t), now let me tell you how we see the rivalry.

I remember growing up watching how CONCACAF was at our feet, we didn’t actually have any rivals that could really jeopardize our chances of going to the World Cup. USA? They didn’t have a football culture; I mean they had baseball, and American football, and basketball, and hockey. Yeah, they were planning on making a football league but we had had one for decades and decades. During the 90s, the USA national team began to play better football and started making us uncomfortable, giving us some headaches, but we were still beating them. They were getting better, but we decided to ignore them (we actually didn’t want to accept it). Their league was growing and ours was getting more and more corrupt with each passing day. Then all of a sudden, they punched us in the face, kicking us out of the World Cup, back in 2002. We got that exact feeling a bully gets when the nerd, years after college, beats him to a job, girlfriend, and even a sports game. Hell, it was way worse than that.

It was the 2002 World Cup, and we had Cuauhtemoc Blanco and Jared Borgetti probably at their peak. The USA were a team who were developing a better league, a better footballing culture, and better systems to raise players, but they weren’t still threatening, we could afford to procrastinate with this issue… at least we thought so. We got over the group stages after beating Croatia, Ecuador, and drawing vs Italy, and what harm could the United States possibly do? Well, they “kicked our nuts”, big time. They did. I still feel like crying. They got there with an excellent defensive system which allowed them to control the midfield, and get us on the break, which they did. I still feel like crying. The city was empty, nobody wanted to speak, it was all death. Perhaps a normal night (it was night here) for some, but for most part of the population, it was a day to cry. We had been overtaken by the ‘gringos’, and kicked out of the World Cup by a team we used to beat so easily. A big step for the USA, a bigger jump backwards for Mexico. I. Still. Feel. Like. Crying.

It all changed. We even chose to ignore it. “It was a bad day”, “we’ll have at them later”, “they were lucky”. No, they weren’t. Their academies, their systems, their footballers, their league, it was all getting better. Meanwhile, our league kept getting more and more corrupt. It was a known fact that if you wanted to be a footballer you needed to pay someone a big amount of money, or have a contact, but it has now got to a limit. You can’t play football now in Mexico is you are not wealthy enough, or have a good contact, a really good one. The national team is made of the players that are actually too good to ignore (look at Guardado and Chicharito) and the best of those who had a contact/were wealthy enough. Our FA is too bad, it’s a pork-house, an establishment full of money-grabbing swines, not even able to look at how bad our football league is, and at their level of stupidity. They get wealthier with each passing minute, and each dollar they make with their corruption is a step back for our football. It is outrageous. And to top it off, the USA are a better team.

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