With his academic scholarship, Dr. Joe Cobbs leans heavily on an understood social dynamic between two very human qualities: envy and scorn. Cobbs was first introduced to these terms, in the sports psychology context, by Dr. Andrei Markovits. He’s the author of several seminal works on sport and society; his 2017 paper used envy and scorn to better understand rivalry in US college football culture, specifically.

Yet the mother of all this scholarship is Princeton psychologist Dr. Susan Fiske, who doesn’t mention sports fandom at all in her work. Even so, her pioneering research totally nails the root nuance beneath why and how we support our teams, in addition to why and how we so despise our arch enemies. “Comparison compels people, even as it stresses, depresses, and divides us,” Fiske wrote in her 2010 paper, Envy Up, Scorn Down: How Comparison Divides Us.

“Comparison is only natural, but the collateral damage reveals envy upward and scorn downward, and these emotions, arguably, poison people and their relationships . . . If comparison contaminates, envy and scorn are worse, but for better reasons. Comparison at least can be adaptive, providing information and motivation, but the feelings that follow can be poisonous. Envy says, I wish I had what you have, but it implies, And I wish you did not have it. Scorn says, You are unworthy of my attention, but I know you are down there somewhere.”

Until I read Fiske, I had never heard the clásico, any clásico, so clearly explained and explored—using such familiar emotional goal posts.

For much of the twentieth century, Mexican football fans scorned US soccer as a rival unworthy of their attentions, while perhaps envying American affluence and influence. On the flip side, US soccer fans for many years envied Mexico’s place in the larger futbol world: its national team prowess, its mature first division, its flamboyant, enthusiastic fan culture, its consistently gorgeous game jerseys. At the same time, the larger US culture was dismissive of the sport—a particularly ugly, peculiarly American affectation that drove Mexicans mad with rage, especially once the USMNT started beating El Tri in the 1990s.

When we Americans think of Michigan vs. Ohio State, or Red Sox vs. Yankees, this dueling combination of envy and scorn feels fairly typical. But it’s highly unusual to find it on the international soccer front. “There’s nothing that Spain envies about Portugal, nothing the Portuguese envy about Spanish culture,” Markovits told me. “With international rivalry, there is no envy. It’s all scorn.”

That Mexico vs. the United States does provoke so much envy and scorn, in both directions, is yet another reason this derby has grown into such a richly textured, utterly intense struggle. In this way, the El Clásico Norteamericano has what distinguished members of the world futbol pantheon—Spain- Portugal, Argentina-Brazil—simply do not.

Envy and Scorn from Both Sides

Still, the most intense international derbies in men’s soccer—Argentina vs. Brazil, Iran vs. Iraq, Germany vs. The Netherlands, Cameroon vs. Nigeria—feature remarkably small amounts of envy.

This was a hypothesis Markovits had not considered until we workshopped the idea together in January 2025. We agreed there are fewer commercial factors that add texture or nuance to an international clásico, as they commonly do in club soccer. As a result, when it’s country vs. country, it’s all scorn from both sides. Because scorn is silent, less is said or written about these cross-border sporting relationships.

Or rather, the amount of international trash talk pales beside that generated by club competitions like Real Madrid vs. Barcelona, Tottenham vs. Arsenal, or River Plate vs. Boca Juniors—because fans and media in these cases share the country, or often the same city.

“I would say that almost all international rivalries are scorn based,” Markovits says.

“The Dutch don’t envy the Germans, for example. They just hate them. There’s nothing about Dutch futbol or culture envied by Germans. It’s all scorn. The larger, more powerful political or economic entity—that can play a role. Think of the dynamic when the Soviets played all the satellite countries during the Cold War. There was nothing but scorn, and also hatred from their opponents. The most intense example”—and an interesting comp for US vs. Mexico—“might be when Algeria plays France. Great intensity on account of the colonial history, as with England playing Ireland. But it’s all scorn from both sides, ultimately.

“Croatia and Serbia don’t spend time thinking about what they admire about the other’s teams or cultures. There’s nothing but scorn or hatred for the other.”

And here is where the US vs. Mexico rivalry really distinguishes itself. There is more than enough scorn coming from both sides, to be sure. But this clásico does feature those rare international elements of envy, those obvious nods toward interdependence—not just in the futbol sense, or in the social sense (those 35 million Mexican Americans living in the United States) but the economic sense, as well.

Fans look South, Owners look north

“While Mexican fans have always preferred to look south, Mexican directors prefer to look north,” the journalist and Substacker Jon Arnold explained to me. “The Mexican national team playing friendlies in the U.S.— we all understand how and why that works. We understand the numbers, the dollars. But the Leagues Cup works the same way. Liga MX club owners know that no matter where they show up in the States, fans will show up. I mean, that’s as simple as it gets. Right?

“It’s not cheap to open up the NRG Stadium in Houston or the Cotton Bowl or wherever they’re playing, but these matches definitely generate enough revenue, just from the gate. Every international break, there are five or six [Liga MX] clubs in the United States playing friendly matches. I think that’s kind of the perpetual conflict of the Mexican football business—How do we monetize these massive groups of fans that we have elsewhere? It’s the only example, the only situation in world futbol, where you have not only a big audience, but also a wealthier audience, paying in dollars. Not in your country, but in the country next door!”

To be clear, the footballing powers that be in Spain and Portugal are not exploring the idea of an Iberian-style Leagues Cup. Too much scorn. These two countries don’t play friendlies; they don’t interact in the competitive futbol sense at all, unless they are required by UEFA to do so. Culturally, as the saying goes, these are two nations that live back to back.

Would a similar, Leagues Cup-type cooperation between top divisions in Argentina and Brazil create economic value, in terms of TV rights sold in South America and Europe? Undoubtedly. But there is far too much scorn from both sides to even consider it.

“There’s an incongruence between the soccer world shared by these two countries, the U.S. and Mexico, and the rest of the world,” Markovits adds. “It’s a very interesting, completely unique story in world futbol.”