What a shame, Liga MX

Just landing from Paris, I’m trying to catch up on what’s happening in Mexican soccer. These past two weeks are perhaps the only time when there’s a complete disconnection from the sport that we talk about 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

The Olympic Games are that brief escape we get every 4 years to leave behind soccer and pay attention to other sports that usually don’t get much follow-up.

And it’s here, when we face reality, that we wish we could stop focusing so much on just one sport and spread our attention to others. Soccer often gives us more disappointments and frustrations than joys. But like any toxic relationship, we’re reluctant to go our separate ways.

It’s somewhat depressing to come back and have to talk about the Leagues Cup. Even more depressing to know that, once again, Mexican teams are falling by the wayside very quickly, and even the local tournament will have to resume sooner than expected. 16 out of 18 teams were eliminated before the quarter-finals. It’s brutal.

And it’s at these times that we ask ourselves: What if we stopped talking about soccer every day? What if people stopped turning on the TV to watch a Mazatlán vs. Puebla match on a Friday? What if fans stopped watching national team games? What if fans stopped spending $800 to attend these games in the United States? Would anything change? Would they stop focusing on the business side and shift their focus back to the sport?

That’s the question I’m asking myself right now. And I include myself in the problem, as the media is definitely part of this vicious cycle that has the Mexican sport stagnant today. Although it’s a privatized sport, where resources come from businessmen’s pockets rather than public funds, ultimately, that revenue comes from the fans. The ones who buy jerseys, attend games, or turn on the TV. They are the main clients, and they’re being neglected.

The quality of the spectacle offered in this Leagues Cup is terrible. Not to mention that, at the same time, it is also harming the local tournament, putting it in the background and distancing fans from their teams for several weeks.

When you go to a restaurant where the service is bad, the food isn’t tasty, and the price is high, you probably won’t go back. The bad news in this case is that this seems to be the experience with Mexican soccer, and yet we’re back every 7 days.

I’m not sure if this new failure of Liga MX in the famous Leagues Cup will bring any change, as the situation was identical a year ago and really little changed.

The ‘experiment’ isn’t working, as the idea of this tournament between two different countries was primarily to capitalize on the Mexican-American market and fill the stadiums with the visit of the 18 Liga MX teams, but the gamble fails when 95% of the teams don’t even make it to the quarter-finals.

The stadiums look empty and the broadcasts generate zero interest without the fans of Chivas, Pumas, Tigres, Cruz Azul, etc., etc., paying attention to their teams. For now, América has the organizers praying that the business doesn’t fall apart.

We’re back, and immediately we face our harsh and complicated reality, but this is our soccer, and this is where we have to live it.

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