[See here an excerpt from Chapter 10 of “Sibling Rivalry.” It appears in the Summer/June issue of Soccer Journal magazine, available here.]

The North American Derby does fascinating things to the footballing attachments of young Latinas. Meet Alexandra, whom Professor Erick Calderon interviewed in May of 2024. The date is relevant. El Tri femenil had shocked the four-time world champion Americans in a group-stage match at the CONCACAF W Gold Cup. Calderon asked Alexandra whether, as a Mexican American, she experienced any feelings of conflict when these two women’s soccer national teams squared off.

“Yes. I have it every time,” she replied. “Where it’s like, Oh, I’m supporting the U.S., but internally I feel like I should be supporting Mexico and knowing more about the Mexico team. . . And for some reason, I just haven’t done it.”

Upon reading this quote, a startling collection of what I shall term “demographic truths” crystallize for us in the world of North American women’s soccer.

According to Calderon, an ethnic studies professor at Shasta College, young Latinas have “relied on the USWNT for years now as an identity figure . . . a peculiar one because it does not stop at ethnicity. The USWNT plays a bigger role socially in the United States as they have contributed to the advancement of women’s sports nationally, have fought for equitable fair pay, and are routinely activist for LGBTQ+ rights. Supporting women’s national teams is not just a way of manifesting national pride, but a way of supporting feminism. It is because of this that Mexican American women find themselves caught in a struggle with identity when they face the Mexican women’s national team.”

Meet Mary: “If men are playing, I cheer for Mexico. If the women are playing, I cheer for the USA. But the last game they played, [the Mexican women] won,” she told the the professor in April 2024. “I cannot tell you the amount of pride I felt. That was nothing like I ever felt for a USA game. I’m getting goosebumps talking about it . . . So much pride in being Mexicana — to know that’s, like, an option for people. It makes me so happy.”

As Calderon neatly summed up: For Mexican Americans, “Every other aspect and way of living may be contested, but soccer remains intact as a way of displaying ethnic attachment.”

Women’s Soccer: Ambition can trump ethnicity

During the 2024–25, Liga MX Feminil season, Mexican American professionals accounted for 25 percent of roster spots on the best three clubs. In 2025, a dozen such players played for El Tri, more than half of the team. From those 12, seven were products of Southern California. However, here’s what you won’t read in any account of American-born women who went south to play for the Mexican women’s national team: Wow, the USWNT whiffed on that one. They should never have let HER get away.

The great preponderance of top-flight mexicanas still choose and will continue to choose Team USA if they have the opportunity and the bloodlines. Ashley Sanchez and Sofia Huerta are two current examples of how ambition can trump ethnicity. Each looked past the El Tri option, just as Catarina Macário looked past the opportunity to represent Brazil. The U.S. Women’s National Team continues to offer all three far better chances to further their professional careers, to consistently compete for, and to win international trophies.

On the men’s side of the ledger, we encounter a mirror image, equally stark. For all the choices over which young Mexican Americans and their families reportedly agonize, El Tricolor and its Federación have yet to lose a highly sought-after Mexican American male to the USMNT. Striker Ricardo Pepi would be the first, and his status as an actual “star who got away” remains pending, as he fights for minutes and continues to mature at Dutch club PSV Eindhoven.

Pepi was born in January 2003, so his best days may still rise to meet him. In the meantime, for young, male dual-nationals of quality, the perceived strength of La Selección and, to a complementary extent, Liga MX, continues to carry the day. Some of that decision-making is cultural — the same process Mexican American futbol fans must navigate, for the same reasons of heritage and identity.

But young soccer prospects are also working a system out of unalloyed ambition, playing one national team program against the other, trying to best position themselves for career success.

As coaches throughout the American West know better than anyone, competition to sign young Mexican American talent is fierce and potentially alienating. The young men over whom federations and clubs make such a fuss often indicate they feel Ni de aquí, ni de allá — “Not from here, or from there.”

Still, most highly touted, dual-national prospects, men or women, don’t seek to address or settle questions of identity and nationality via this type of decision-making. Far from it. The rules governing national team affiliation only encourage them to have it both ways, to play it both ways — right up until the twelfth-hour moment when they formally commit to one senior national team or another. Even then, once a player formally chooses, the rules further allow them to petition FIFA and request a final, one-time change of nationality.

Ever heard of Edwin Lara? What about Jesse González or Abraham Romero? Each was born in this country during the late 1990s and played youth internationals for both federations. Lara exercised his one-time switch option, while Romero and Gonzalez were only rumored to have considered such a measure.

In the end, none of the three ever played a senior international for the U.S. or El Tricolor.

Youth National Team Hopscotch

It may seem a bit “in the weeds” to spend time discussing obscure teenage fans of the El Clásico Norteamericano, alongside equally adolescent, unproven youth prospects who may never play a minute for any of the four senior national teams.

Yet these are the North American Siblings most likely to shape the U.S.-Mexico rivalry going forward. Born in this century, tempered by years of unisexual Youth National Team Hopscotch, they are the derby’s unlikely, would-be custodians, and, in that respect, the 2026 World Cup is a sort of testing ground, perhaps even a tryout.

This June, the two men’s programs will attempt to go as deep into the tournament as possible — to achieve competitive glory for themselves, for their respective nations, but also to earn the future commitments of youth internationals and soccer-loving fans still making up their minds. The women will follow suit at World Cup 2027.

According to Tony Lepore, director of talent identification for the U.S. Federation, as many as 100 dual nationals participate in the various U.S. Federation youth teams at any one time. Only a handful will ever compete for the United States or Mexican senior national teams. And yet, the posturing doesn’t stop — not from U-17 team coaches, who strongly and publicly suggest these players are difference-makers. Not from coaches whose clubs stand to benefit from the progression of its high-profile prospects. Not from the competitors themselves, who assert bedrock love of [insert-country-here] depending on which Federation or media outlet is asking. Everyone seems to read from the same scripts. Until such time that, having made a decision and come to regret it, they file their respective one-time switch applications with FIFA.

Now sift into these capsule case studies the conventional wisdom that the U.S. Soccer Federation isn’t doing enough to seek out and foster Mexican American talent in this country. This charge has been levied for years. Forget for a moment about how expensive club soccer might be here. Clearly there are a great deal of national-team opportunities that Mexican Americans today entertain and may see fit to spurn, opting instead for the rival national team.

Does it make sense to spend more Federation dollars and man-hours uncovering additional players of value, only to have a healthy portion of them ultimately declare for El Tri?

Today, the U.S. and Mexico have formed and share a single North America soccer ecosystem. This organism is the complicated subject of innumerable family dramas, but today there is little doubt they strengthen each Sibling as a footballing nation.

Yet here’s an uncomfortable truth: The entire Mexican futbol establishment relies on the Mexican American population to repeatedly show up en masse and pay for their international friendly and Leagues Cup tickets — in U.S. currency. The Federation and Liga MX cater to and court this population over the airwaves, 24/7, with the help of mega-channel TUDN and its advertisers. They’ve also been conducting youth tryouts across SoCal, Arizona, and Texas for decades, fostering the impression among dual nationals (and their parents) that legitimate pathways to La Selección are there for the taking.

“Elite” youth clubs and coaches in these regions are no less eager to leverage the heritage angle. San Diego Surf S.C. routinely holds “Mexican American ID Camps” where boys and girls ages 12–15 are encouraged to come try out — at $100 per session, according to the 2025 ad I saw in Soccer America daily newsletter. The boy featured in the advertisement was wearing the latest El Tri away kit.

On account of so many dual nationals born and raised north of the border, Mexican clubs do draw heavily but strategically from this US-based talent pool. Liga MX maintains a 9:7 rule, which limits the number of foreigners on senior rosters (to 9) and mandates that no more than 7 non-Mexicans take the field at any one time. Mexican Americans are considered foreigners — unless they are registered with the Mexican Federación before the age of 19. This canny carve-out, and the pull of family heritage, often makes the professional futbol life in Liga MX more attractive and accessible.

“It’s easier for me to make a phone call to Mexico and get opportunities for one of my kids to be seen by professional clubs than it is here in the United States,” says Jesse Cadena, president of Phoenix-based Tuzos Mesa Academy.

On the flip side, according to Jesse Magallon of Ozzy’s Laguna F.C. in Santa Ana, California, plenty of new arrivals want their children to stay in the United States. “There are the parents,” he explains, “that think, ‘Well, we immigrated here to find a better life, and you want to go back to Mexico. How does that make any sense?’ Well, the profession that makes the most money in Mexico is soccer. So, when you send your kid back to Mexico, it’s with that expectation.”