Walking through the tailgate scene outside Estadio Akron, I stopped a few times to chat up the locals—hoping to find English speakers to discuss the match and our multigenerational family feud. This search proved largely fruitless. Google Translate can only do so much. But those limited conversations, taken together, did accentuate one thing: Mexican fans were impressed and maybe a bit spooked by Mauricio Pochettino’s recent hire. Be it broken English or fluent Spanish, the man’s name kept coming up.

As a fan of Tottenham, whom Poch managed from 2014–19, I don’t disagree with the sentiment. He’s clearly the most impressive, experienced coaching hire in the 108-year history of the US Men’s National Team. But Pochettino is respected reflexively in Mexico because he’s Argentinian, and Mexican admiration for Argentinian futbol culture runs deep. And a bit eccentric.

The fixation dates back to the origins of soccer in the Americas, as La Albiceleste exhibited world-class form from the very beginnings of the international game. Their national teams immediately gained finals. They leveraged their European heritage to win finals, sometimes in Italian shirts (!). After claiming the 1978 World Cup, they officially took their place among the game’s global aristocracy—a pedigree underlined by one legend at the Azteca in 1986, and then again at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, courtesy of another.

It makes sense that Mexicans envy Argentinian skill. Mexican admire Argies for their tournament success and high standing. For their part, Mexicans take great pride in the fact that Maradona reached his potential in their country. They feel the same way about Pelé.

Also well established as fact: No country exports coaching talent on the scale of Argentina. Tata Martino managed Mexico at the 2022 World Cup, after all. In September 2023, as qualifying for World Cup 2026 got underway in South America, all but three of the ten national teams were led by Argies. In Guadalajara, back in October 2025, CONCACAF guru Jon Arnold pointed out to me there were just three Mexican managers in the 18-team Liga MX. The number of Argentine skippers? Seven.

Mexicans admire Argies for something else sky blue and white: An in-your-face, hyper- masculine M.O. that fans of El Tri especially perceive, in their heart of hearts, as totally bad-ass and weirdly admirable. If there’s a single Spanish word to describe and inform this cultural phenomenon, it’s desmadre, which translates as “motherless,” implying that people without mothers have no manners, and therefore behave badly. Desmadre can also translate as “chaos.” In the specific Latin American soccer context, I think another useful English-language comp would be “shithousery,” laced with heavy doses of homophobic chest-beating.

Argie Desmadre Never Lets Up, Never Forgets.

Everyone in Latin America, especially the Mexicans, acknowledges that Argentinian players, clubs, and fans are masters of this peevish form. Not just supporters who seek to create unsettling pandemonium in and around stadiums. The national team and its players have proved equally resourceful, when it comes to these dark arts. Be it Diego Simeone quaintly baiting David Beckham into a red card during the 1998 World Cup Round of 16; or Boca Juniors captain Rubén Suñé starting a bloody brawl with Sporting Cristal of Lima on March 17, 1971 (nineteen players were sent off); or Argentine clubs paying supporter groups, the barra bravas, to serve as violent paramilitaries—a twenty-first-century trend that has destroyed attendance in the country’s first division.

These are small potatoes compared to the nation’s Federation and brutal military junta allegedly collaborating to fix a match against Peru to ensure Argentina’s place (at Brazil’s expense) in the 1978 Mundial final. We witnessed another high-profile example in Miami, Florida, at the close of Copa América 2024, when Argentine internationals celebrated the title by singing a post- match, locker-room ditty that denigrated French national team players as hailing from all over the world. That is, everywhere but France. It wasn’t sour grapes: Messi & Co. had just won the Copa final—against Colombia. The singing was meant to troll their victims from the World Cup final held two years prior.

Win or lose, the Argentinian brand of desmadre never lets up and never forgets. For it has but one clear, universal goal: to gain an advantage by getting under an opponent’s skin. The more coarse the language, the more overt the bigoted tones and physical intimidation, the better.

That Mexicans admire Argies for this behavior would, at first blush, seem an odd fit for Mexican fans and the national population at large. In most walks of life, the Mexican people do not demonstrate these disagreeable traits at all. They are famously polite. “Mexicans would never insult anyone, especially to your face,” attests Amy Glover, a dual citizen born in Michigan but a Mexican resident for thirty years. “It’s just not their way, their culture. In twenty-five years of my living here, even though I look the way I do, no one has ever even been rude to me. Ever! Mexicans don’t play that game. Americans are far more violent and rude, to be honest.”

This subject matter has very little to do with Americans. It’s more to do with Mexico’s would-be rivalry with Argentina, alongside Mexico’s age-old struggle to assert itself as a first-world futbol power. Without signature victories from El Tri or Liga MX clubs abroad, the optics of this striving can be unfortunate. Witness the dust-up between Mexican and Argentinian supporters following their group-stage encounter at the Qatari World Cup. “Social media videos showed Mexico fans provoking Argentines with insults over all-time top scorer Messi and their Falklands War defeat by Britain,” Reuters reported in November 2022. “That led to street brawling that left some fans bleeding and injured, according to footage and photos.”

US soccer fans have surely noticed the in-stadium habit of El Tri supporters calling the opposing goalkeeper puto, or “fag.” That’s quintessential desmadre behavior, and it dovetails with this deep-seated Mexican cynicism about their own national team. Mexican fans normally resort to the chant only when El Tri is losing or not performing up to expectations. It’s an attempt to change the energy inside a stadium. To change the subject, as it were. In Guadalajara, the performance was good: Fans laid but a single puto on US keeper Matt Turner. Up 2-nil and riding high, their hearts just weren’t in it.

Undertaken in homage to Argentinian bad behavior, the puto chant and other transgressive stadium behaviors also have a broader purpose. They’re meant to supply the sharp edge that Mexicans and their national teams have lacked. Or, that is the perception among Mexican fans themselves.

The Public language of Sexism & Misogyny

The language of desmadre is inherently, almost necessarily sexist and misogynist. True men, according to its unwritten rules, defend territory and honor club or country by dominating, demeaning, and/or emasculating the opponent, according to Patrick Thomas Ridge in his excellent essay, “Mexico ‘On Top’: Queering Masculinity in Contemporary Mexican Soccer Chronicles.” These so-called “ultras” do so by brawling with rivals, but more often by calling them out as, say, “cabaret bitches” or “penetrated” losers unworthy of honored places in the arena. In predictably twisted machista fashion, the penetrator is not a sexual deviant, only the violated party.

This offensive stance can manifest by actually squaring off with opposing supporters inside or outside stadiums, and this does happen in Argentina. However, the chants best spell out what’s really going on. Here’s a common sentiment from supporters of the Buenos Aires club Atlético Huracán: Le vamos a romper el culo!, to wit: “We’re going to ream your ass!” Charming.

Mexican fans take these themes and run with them, but their chants and wordplay are nevertheless a bit more subtle and clever. Club América, as the richest and most successful club in Liga MX, is a frequent target. When Los Aguilas, “The Eagles,” aren’t being derided as zopilotes (“buzzards”), opposing supporters might create a derisive song that mentions las chillahermanas, or those who cry like little girls. Or they might go straight to las huilas, an abstract take on the old standby, “whores.”

These multiple variations on vulgar themes should help US readers contextualize the whole puto thing. When on-field developments are going badly for El Tri, when a Mexican crowd is somehow embarrassed or bored by the performance, slinging homophobic slurs at opposing goalies comes straight from the desmadre playbook. The anonymity of the crowd, the desire to stir the pot and change the game, transforms hyper-polite Mexicans into transgressors.

Most everyone across the Americas finds the Argentinians generally, and their soccer fans specifically, to be shameless assholes who behave in a rude, brazenly underhanded fashion when it suits them. At the same time, Argentinians are keen to claim a more refined European lineage (read: whiteness) compared to their South and Central American neighbors. [Not surprisingly, this is the northern European hooligan dismissal of Italian and Argentinian bravos: All talk, not enough actual fighting.]

Mexicans and Mexican Americans, for all their good manners, would appear to respect and advocate for this crude conduct—in the futbol context, where they continue to embrace the foul-mouthed chaos and protection of the crowd. On either side of the border.

Aspiring to a Higher Rung of Rivalry

More important to our subject matter: In mimicking the cheeky misbehavior of Argentinian fan culture, Mexicans are actively aspiring to a higher rung of rivalry. Followers of El Tri want desperately to beat the United States. On this subject, there is no doubt. But when it comes to international futbol distinction, the Yanks do not have what the Mexicans most desire. La Albiceleste do, and Mexicans have carried a fervent case of Argentina envy for a very long time.

“It must definitely be Argentina, because Argentina is one of the best teams in the world,” TNT Mexico journalist Marion Reimers explained to me. “Mexico has been very close to beating them. They lost at the 2010 World Cup with a goal that was offside from Carlos Tevez. But culturally there is also a big, big feud between Mexico and Argentina.

“We are on different sides of the spectrum in Spanish-speaking America. They are the deepest south and we are the furthest north—the two poles. Let me help my American friends understand what that means: We have so many countries that speak Spanish. We all share the same language. We all have variations of that language, but we kind of understand each other and our particularities. It’s like a big brotherhood.

“But since we understand each other culturally and linguistically, we know how they are—and they understand how we are. And Argentinians are famous for being very sour losers and even worse winners. Yet I’ve also heard Mexicans speak very glowingly about how Azteca is the place where Maradona was crowned and where he realized his greatest potential. They take pride in it.”

Meaning, the Azteca is so mystically potent, it’s a place where even nasty, cheating Argies can come to finish their hero’s journey?

“Claro. It’s a magical land. It’s the land of the Aztecs! It’s the land where everything happened . . . There’s also this interesting feud because Argentina is one of the biggest economic markets in Latin America and Mexico is always bigger. They resent this. But in terms of football and other stuff, we hate them because they’re arrogant and because, I mean, we’re hurt by all the losses.”

Remembering our rivalry scholar Dr. Joe Cobbs, the narrative and cinematic factors most important to the evolution of any clásico are envy and scorn. (Call them, “Worst Supporting Actors in a Dramatic Series.”) It appears the Argentina-Mexico derby embodies and obeys these critical signposts. And yet, they are not competitive equals, and it ain’t even close. Nor do they play often enough to make a rivalry work.

“Absolutely,” Reimers says. “That makes all the sense in the world. I do love those two concepts.”

For his part, Leo Messi remains mystified by the whole relationship, specifically the jeers he received when Inter Miami visited Monterrey during the 2024 CONCACAF Champions Cup. “I don’t know what happened with the Mexicans, when that anger started, because I always felt very loved by the people of Mexico,” he told the Associated Press in January 2025. “I never disrespected anyone, but they took a position of having a rivalry with us that doesn’t really exist. There is no comparison between Argentina and Mexico.”