In this Issue of Voices of Mexico
Content

Our Voice

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Not Just the Beautiful Game
The 2026 World Cup

The Power of fifa
Geopolitical Influence and Adaptation For the 2026 World Cup
fifa as a Geopolitical Actor
Juan Carlos Barrón Pastor

The academic literature on global sport has moved beyond the traditional view that regarded sports organizations as neutral and apolitical entities. Authors such as Simon Chadwick, Paul Widdop, and Christos Anagnostopoulos have helped to consolidate a field of study that analyzes soccer as a major economic and geopolitical phenomenon. In this context, fifa emerges not only as the administrator of world soccer but also as an actor capable of exercising soft power, negotiating with states and corporations, and strategically adapting to changes in the international system.

 

Mexico Co-host of the 2026 World Cup:
Sport Diplomacy and Place Management through The Beautiful Game
Victoria Ávila-Duque

Football is more than a game. It stands as the world's most influential sporting endeavour. In this context, Latin America has played a fundamental role in the history of this mega sporting event. This year, Mexico will become the first country to be designated as host of the World Cup for the third time. This implies undeniable advantages for the country in terms of national pride and economic development, but it also presents major challenges in terms of regional diplomacy and long-term legacy.

 

The Soft Power of the 2026 World Cup.
Challenges and Images Abroad
Erik del Ángel Landeros

The International Football Federation Association (fifa) and the 2026 World Soccer Cup have been on the receiving end of different criticisms, among them the high cost of tickets to the games and the Peace Prize Gianni Infantino gave Donald Trump in 2025. However, this huge sporting event and the ones that preceded it are widely popular in many countries, and Mexico is no exception.

 

Pumas as a Developmental Program:
Identity, Sports, and Social Responsibility
Luis Raúl González Pérez

Soccer at Club Universidad Nacional is a unique model within the context of Mexican college and professional sports. In the professional division, our men's and women's teams are a high-performance developmental program that goes beyond sports competition. We are a club that represents the university through a commitment to the values-based education of our players.

 

Soccer as a Cultural Industry
Alejandro Mercado-Celis & Yolanda Macías

Soccer is much more than a sport: millions of people the world over stop what they're doing to watch a game; governments invest billions of dollars to organize a world cup; companies pay fortunes to sponsor a team. Beyond being an attraction as a spectator sport and its economic importance, soccer must be thought of as a cultural industry that produces signifiers with profound implications for society, the economy, and people's identities.

 

The World Cup Off the Field
Tourism, Airbnb, and Housing Pressure
Yesua Martínez Torres

At first glance, it might seem that today's housing access problem has little or no relationship to the 2026 World Soccer Cup. However, we might reconsider that judgment if we take into account the size of the event, the sheer number of fans that the sixteen host cities will be receiving, and the participation of short-term housing platforms.

 

Tourism, Sports, and Mega-Events and How They Contribute to the Global Economy;
Lessons for Mexico
Miriam Nava Zazueta

Historically, activities related to tourism and sports have been analyzed separately. It was in October 1999, with the signing of the agreement between the International Olympic Committee and the World Tourism Organization, that sport was fully recognized as a factor influencing tourism and as a contributor to the dissemination of culture, the promotion of tolerance and sustainability, and the fostering of cordial relations and peace.

 

Gender Quotas: Striking a Balance in Women's Soccer
Adrianelly Hernández

Women have been part of soccer for over 120 years, both as players and fans. However, there's no doubt that they have faced obstacles from a patriarchal society that was convinced that the ball was masculine. Changes in laws and public policies are finally opening doors that were long closed. A prime example is fifa's recent mandatory inclusion of women on the coaching staffs of women's teams.

 

A Struggle on Two Fronts
Women's Soccer in the United States and Mexico
Giovanni Alejandro Pérez Uriarte

Thanks to the struggle of several generations of women, today, women's soccer has won recognition and space in the media, as well as in the multinational company that monopolizes professional soccer, the International Football Federation Association (fifa). The United States has a consolidated league, while the first professional women's soccer league in Mexico was not founded until 2017.

 

The Coming of Age of Football's Illegitimate Daughter
From Playing in the Margins to Claiming a Place in the Global Game
Andrea Rodebaugh Hutrón

Talking about soccer is talking about my biggest passion. My identity. My aim. My life. And, for me, being able to talk about soccer is a privilege. Because I'm a woman. When I began to dream about soccer, no one listened. The only thing I heard was laughter, taunts, and skepticism.

 

A Hairbreadth Away from the 2026 World Cup
Víctor Granados

Amidst the world's fragile economic, political, and even military situation, it falls to North America (Mexico, the United States, and Canada) to organize the 2026 world soccer championship for the International Soccer Federation Association (fifa). The world cup returned to the Americas twelve years after Brazil 2014 and after being held once in Europe (Russia 2018) and once in Asia (Qatar 2022).

 

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Art and Culture

Ángel Zárraga's, Las Futbolistas: A Standard of Beauty, Modernity, and Sport in 20th Century Art
Sergio Artemio Guillermo Valentín

A large-format canvas, currently housed at the Museum of Modern Art (mam) in Mexico City, depicts three female soccer players standing on a soccer field, looking directly at the viewer. The work was created in 1922 by Ángel Zárraga Argüelles, known as the “Mexican of Paris,” who portrayed his wife, the Russian-born soccer player Jeannette Ivanoff, alongside Henriette Comte and Thérèse Renault, members of the women's team Les Sportives de Paris. Zárraga became the first painter to grant female soccer players a central place in art history.

 

Zarathustra's House
Gustavo Marcovich
Illustrations by Santiago Solís Montes de Oca

“Stop” has several meanings: among them, it means catching the ball when you're the goalie or the place where you wait for a bus. Albor claimed them all at the same time: he was waiting for the bus to go to a soccer training session where he was the goalie and he was young. There was Albor, waiting for a ride. And it came, but not the one he expected, or wanted, then…or ever.

 

The Gods Play Ball.
Soccer, Market, and Matter in González Leal's Work
Emmanuel Razo

Gabriela González Leal's work fits together as a poetics of matter, in which the metaphor transforms and re-signifies. This lyrical capability seems to find its origin in the figure of her father, a writer whose manuscripts she uses as raw material in one of her first series. In that work, childhood, nostalgia, and play are constants, crisscrossed by a mourning that does not dissipate, but is displaced: from memory to matter, and from matter to memory.

 

Un mundo de goles (A World of Goals) by Antonio Fink
Voices of Mexico Staff

A visual artist as well as a die-hard soccer fan, Antonio used memories and drawings to get his young children interested in the sport. What began twenty years ago as a series of sketches is now a graphic novel: “This book was born during summers that feel like extra time. I started it in an attic in 2006, for my two sons, with the idea of writing a soccer adventure for them where every play would spark their memory of legendary goals.”

 

Concrete Fortress
Eder Bayuelo

The imminent failure of the Mexican National Team during the 2026 World Cup in North America will not be the fault of its players or the current head coach. Rather, it will be the almost mathematical consequence of an equation with 15 variables: eight corporations and seven individuals, all of them owners of clubs in the Mexican Soccer League, solely and absolutely responsible for all the decisions that define the course of our bitter soccer.

 

When Soccer Builds a City: Stadiums, Memory, And Identity in Mexico
Enrique Rodríguez Escudero

Mexico will host its third fifa World Cup in 2026. Although only thirteen matches will be played in Mexico City, Monterrey, and Guadalajara, the strategies and initiatives currently underway in the areas of urban infrastructure and architecture are significant. Much has changed in Mexico since 1970, when we hosted the World Cup for the first time.

 

The King of Athleisure Beer:
How Michelob Ultra Promotes Social Fitness via Lionel Messi
Emily J.H. Contois

Football star Lionel Messi smiles and points to the Michelob Ultra on tap. When the beer runs out just as the bartender starts to fill his glass, she asks him, “Maybe a different beer?” But no other beer will do. “No, no. Michelob Ultra,” says Messi, good naturedly but firmly. As he turns his back to the bar, a football rolls up to his bare feet, and an impromptu game of beach football breaks out.

 

Sports Spectacle Seen from Bars and Restaurants:
Mexico City's Hospitality Workers and the 2026 World Cup
Julieta Flores Jurado
Illustration by Elizabeth Flores Jurado

On February 8, 2026, during the memorable halftime show of the lx Super Bowl, millions of spectators watched Puerto Rican star singer-songwriter Bad Bunny drink a small glass of cañita, handed to him by an elegant woman in her eighties. This woman is María Antonia Cay, affectionately known as Toñita, the owner of Caribbean Social Club in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

 

Soccer in Mexico through Cinema and the Untold Story of Copa 71
Oswaldo A. Lara Orozco

2026 is the year of the fifa World Soccer Cup, held in the United States, Mexico, and Canada. Soccer is the most deeply rooted sport in Mexico. From the time we were little girls or boys, many of us played soccer just outside our houses. That's the Mexico I grew up in, which is why I think it's a bigger soccer country than our neighbors to the North.

 

World Cups through Time
Ingrid Cruz

Football was not introduced as an exhibition sport until the 1900 Olympics, which led to the creation of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association in 1904. Its first attempt to organize an international competition occurred in 1909, with the Sir Thomas Lipton Trophy in Turin, Italy. The first official World Cup was finally performed on July 13 of 1930. The only time this competition was suspended was during World War II, from 1942 until 1946.