PACHUCA, Mexico — In the bottom floor of the dormitory at one of Mexico’s most successful soccer academies, more than two dozen middle-school-age boys gathered last week to watch intently as Croatia crushed Argentina in a World Cup game.

They wore the orange shirts and black pants of Pachuca, a professional soccer club whose academy at the University of Football and Sports Sciences here has given the Mexican national team some of its most exciting stars at the World Cup.

Hirving Lozano, 22, the rising superstar of the Mexican team, is called Chucky, after the horror-film character, because he used to hide and then frighten his teammates at the academy. He and two other standouts from Pachuca — Érick Gutiérrez, 23, and Héctor Herrera, 28 — represent a young wave of talent that has helped propel Mexico to the round of 16.

The boys at the academy hope not only to make the team one day but also to turn Mexico into what it has long aspired to be: a soccer powerhouse on the world stage. The country has not made it past the round of 16 in the World Cup since 1986.