At the Los Angeles Times, "Mexico's national soccer team finds a great home venue -- in the U.S.":
Last year, Mexico played more games in the U.S. — eight — than the U.S. national team played domestically. Since February 2010, Mexico has played 30 of its 50 non-tournament games, called friendlies, in this country — many before sellout crowds.The team's owner openly disses Mexican nationals. Not enough lucre. Well, at least he's not a communist. That's the only good takeaway from this story. He's not a scummy, decrepit Marxist-Leninist revolutionary America-basher, like most of the idiot stateside Mexican leftists who're going to the games.
This isn't to say the U.S. team isn't popular here. According to Adidas, the uniform provider for the Mexican national team, the U.S. and Mexico sold nearly an equal number of team jerseys in this country last year. Most second- and third-generation Mexican-Americans rate the U.S. as their second-favorite team.
Mexico is first....
The U.S. has a Mexican American population of more than 35 million, accounting for more than 65% of a U.S. Spanish-speaking marketplace that is increasingly attractive to advertisers. The most popular team is the Mexican national team, which is why SUM has been able to get major corporations such as Wells Fargo, Unilever, Allstate, Castrol, Makita and Home Depot to sponsor U.S. tours.
Not surprisingly, the Mexican team's favorite cities are ones with huge expatriate populations such as Phoenix, Houston, Dallas and Los Angeles, where they regularly pack huge football stadiums.
In Southern California, Mexico drew more than 90,000 to the Rose Bowl for a meaningless midweek exhibition with New Zealand in 2010. A year later an overwhelmingly pro-Mexico crowd of 93,420 was in Pasadena for the Gold Cup final with the U.S. Some of the U.S. players were extremely unsettled at being the visiting team in their own country. The American national team hasn't played Mexico in Southern California since then.
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