The Concacaf giants square off in Pasadena on Saturday, and as the two nations grow closer, ‘sometimes you feel like you’re neither from here nor there’

There are few, if any, rivalries in international soccer in which the home team’s fans are as frequently and heavily outnumbered as when the USA hosts Mexico.



The Rose Bowl will be packed with 93,000 fans when the two neighbours meet in Pasadena, California on Saturday, the majority of them Mexicans immigrants or Mexican Americans born and raised in the United States but whose family ancestry makes them die-hard Mexico supporters. Some will speak no Spanish and others will have never set foot in Mexico, yet they will cheer their side as hard as they jeer the Star-Spangled Banner. This is the nature of the complex and often heated rivalry that Pasadena native Pablo Miralles believes is “more dynamic and more important to more people than any other international football rivalry.”

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Miralles decided to explore the rivalry in his 2012 documentary Gringos at the Gate after being taken aback by a Mexican friend’s emotional response when he suggested the US was becoming the superior footballing nation. Miralles told the Guardian: “Initially he was very angry but he thought about it and he actually started tearing up, and he said: ‘You don’t understand. If the United States gets better than Mexico at soccer then what do we have over you guys?’”

For decades, Mexico would routinely dominate the United States. But ever since USA knocked El Tri out of the 2002 World Cup the rivalry has been much less one-sided. Mexico has not won since the last time they met in the Rose Bowl, a dramatic 4-2 victory capped by a Giovani Dos Santos wonder-goal in the 2011 Gold Cup final. This time around there is a place in the 2017 Confederations Cup at stake, but for Mexican American fans this is also an opportunity to reaffirm a sometimes fragile sense of identity.

“For people like myself who don’t go to Mexico all the time, it’s a place for us to celebrate our culture,” ESPN football journalist César Hernández told the Guardian. Hernández, whose parents are from Mexico, was born and raised in a “heavily Latino area” of east Los Angeles. When it came to supporting El Tri he had little choice: “I was born with a bunch of Chivas and Mexico jerseys. It’s been embedded in my mind, soccer is not just a sport, it’s something that in my family we’re all so passionate about.”

Having grown up between two different cultures and sometimes been made to feel “either too American or too Mexican,” Hernández said going to watch El Tri makes him “immensely proud” of his Mexican heritage. “It’s not just soccer; if you go to any of those Mexican games in the US, it’s almost like a political venue sometimes. You’ll see people holding up signs about Donald Trump and about stuff that’s going on in Mexico.”

Trump’s inflammatory comments about Mexican migrants have stoked passions but generally been met with good humour in Mexico. Sales of Trump piñatas are booming, while a cheeky preview of Saturday’s game by TV Azteca went viral for interspersing footage of Mexican triumphs over USA with clips of Trump declaring “Our country is in serious trouble” and “We don’t have victories any more”.

The Mexican American fanbase has become something of a cash cow for Mexico’s football federation, which knows it can charge higher ticket prices than back home and still sell out vast stadiums. Saturday’s game will be the 14th time Mexico has played in the United States this year, whereas next week’s friendly against Panama will be only their second home game of 2015. Last year they played eight games in the United States and just three in Mexico.

Still, fans in the US are happy to embrace every opportunity to watch their heroes live. Hernández, who has seen Mexico play about 30 times in the United States, said El Tri is effectively the home side, with approximately 80% of the support in most venues. Soundtracked by live mariachi bands, the scenes outside the stadium before each game are a blur of Mexican flags, carne asadas and stalls selling traditional toys and candy from south of the border, Hernández said. “I’ve yet to experience anything on that level when it comes to celebrating my culture. Anything else pales in comparison with going to see the national team play.”

As the two nations grow ever closer, the lines between them have become increasingly blurred. Many Mexican American families are divided, with second or third-generation immigrants often identifying more with US culture than their Mexican roots. Hernández noted that it’s common to see a dad in a Mexico shirt at a game with his children in USA jerseys. A few particularly conflicted fans in Gringos at the Gate can even be seen wearing half-and-half jerseys or painting their faces with both countries’ flags.

It’s also become more common to see Mexican American players in both squads, like former US international Hérculez Gómez. The son of Mexican immigrants, Gómez was born in Los Angeles and grew up in Las Vegas. Opting to represent the US was an easy decision, he told the Guardian, even though it meant his wife and parents, all hardcore Mexico fans, had to switch their allegiance: “I was born in the States, I was educated in the States and I learned how to play the game in the States. And all my heroes that I grew up with were national team guys like Cobi Jones, Alexi Lalas and Eric Wynalda.”

Having divided his career between over a dozen clubs in the MLS and the Liga MX, Gómez, now of Toronto FC, has lived the rivalry like few other players have. “Sometimes you feel like you’re neither from here nor there, you’re caught somewhere in between. It’s very difficult, especially growing up,” he said of the constant struggle of living with a dual identity. Although often referred to in Mexico as a pocho – a sometimes derogatory term for Mexican Americans who have assimilated into US culture or speak substandard Spanish – Gómez feels he eventually earned the acceptance of fans south of the border who would say, “OK, you’re a gringo, but you’re our gringo”.

Ahead of Saturday’s game, Gómez, who starred in the USA’s historic first victory on Mexican soil in 2012, observed that “both teams are going through growing pains in terms of figuring out who they are.” Jürgen Klinsmann has sought to incorporate more Hispanic players into the US team, but many believe the answer to his side’s identity crisis lies in wholeheartedly embracing the nation’s vast Latino talent pool.

Joaquín Escoto, director of the Alianza de Futbol program to develop Latino players across the US, told the Guardian that working-class Latinos have long been excluded by the “pay-to-play” system that sees soccer moms and dads stump up steep membership fees and travel costs to support their kids’ development.

It’s much easier for young Latinos to break into Mexico’s youth system than to take the expensive college route to professional soccer in the US, Escoto noted. This means the US misses out as Mexican clubs and even Mexico’s national team hoover up the most promising talent on their doorstep.

If the USA is to truly surpass Mexico and become a global giant it must make the sport more accessible to Latinos, Miralles agreed. The discovery of a Mexican American Messi or Ronaldo would not only transform USA’s fortunes on the pitch, he affirmed, but also the way it’s viewed by future generations of Latinos, who might suddenly decide to support the country of their birth after all.