Like the mountains towering over Mexico City, which sits in a 40 mile by 40 mile valley at 7,350 feet altitude, el Estadio Azteca looms on the horizon like a giant peak to be scaled. And based on the previous 17 visits to Mexico, that's exactly what it has been for the US national team as it had lost every one, usually by large margins.
Officially, it is now known as the Guillermo Can~edo Stadium, named after the late Mexican soccer official who was instrumental in getting the 1970 and 1986 World Cups played in Mexico, and indirectly in getting the Azteca stadium built in 1966. The stadium also has a third name, one used frequently by Andres Cantor, namely the "Coloseo de Santa Ursula", after the Catholic tradition of attaching saints' names to significant monuments or structures.
And significant is what the Can~edo/Azteca is! From the outside it is impressive enough, but one only gets the full effect of its magnitude from the inside. It is shaped roughly like RFK but with 2 important differences, it's more than two times as big and at least four times as loud. I went with Mexican friends (4 adults/4 kids) and we had seats on the lower level in the near-side (TV perspective) left corner about 15 rows back, just under the mezzanine overhang. Looking up from that level to the upper deck gave the impression that you actually were looking up the side of a mountain. The difference here was that there were 115,000 people on the "mountain" and they were all making noise and it was still an hour before kickoff.
Looking around, we saw flags and banners everywhere with a giant "Ultras Mexico" at the front of the upper deck at the opposite end and a predictable "Gringos Go Home" banner to its right. I also discovered the source of the famous "Azteca Buzz", the sound that's reminiscent of millions of killer bees loose in the stadium. It's a combination of plastic horns and the famous wooden "Mexican Rattles", that one twirls around and makes a 'clack-clack' sound. Of course, I had to buy one.
The most resounding cry was the famous chant that ends with "...Mexico, Mexico, RAH, RAH, RAH!" and was echoing throughout the stadium before the game and for about the first 10 minutes of play. However, by the time the 75th minute arrived, the most significant chanting was "Fuera Bora! (Bora Out!)". At that point the fans were booing and whistling "el Tri" and cheering and "ole-ing" the Gringos as we passed the ball around. I've never seen fans turn on their own club/country so thoroughly or so quickly. These people have to be the most fickle fans in the world. What legitimately is the planet's most hostile location for a visiting club, turned into a hellhole for "el Tri".
What happened?
In a word, overconfidence. Already by the preceding Thursday, the Mexican press was asking the players how many goals they would score. And by Sunday, one of the papers had the headline across the top of the sports section that read: "Se espera una goleada" (We're expecting a goalfest). By this time I realized that the Mexican team was even far more overconfident than we were against Jamaica and there was at least a point here to be taken. As a Mexican writer asserted in the most recent issue of Mas Futbol (the Soccer America insert), the best thing that can happen to Mexican soccer is a healthy rivalry with the US so that Mexican soccer realizes that it can't automatically assume that it is the unchallenged king of CONCACAF.
The crowd inside the stadium was generally well-behaved and there was only a little of the debris-throwing that previous visitors had warned about. Unfortunately it came close with some direct hits on the poor Mexican fans in the row in front of us. Sitting just below the mezzanine we started seeing a few bits of tamales dropping from above, later followed by a chocolate milkshake, of all things. Yet, rather than coming from the "tifosi" in the "peso seats" in the upper deck, it was coming from the "high rollers" in the mezzanine! So much for class-based stereotypes.
Finally, I can't close this report from my conveniently- arranged business trip to Mexico City without discussing the powers of the bellhop in the small hotel where I stayed in the city. As I was waiting for my friends to pick me up to go to the game, he correctly predicted that the match would end 0:0, a prediction I at first disagreed with. But at that moment a hotel guest, nattily attired in a white shirt and black slacks, came strolling through the lobby carrying a submachine gun and exchanged greetings with my bellhop, just like they were a couple of old "compadres" as the gun-toting "hombre" strolled outside to his car. I quickly said, "OK, OK 0:0 sounds pretty good to me!"
This article first appeared in the New England Revolution Fanzine, Pictures of Chairman Mao in November 1997.
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