[jandrewrogers]

The counterpoint to this is that, broadly speaking, Mexico is demonstrably no better at soccer than the US when it matters. A common talking point in recent years is that the US league is actually better at developing Mexican talent than the Mexican league, though that somewhat reflects different incentives.

I think a core issue is that US and Mexican teams rarely have an opportunity to compete against teams significantly better than themselves. Furthermore, structural constraints within both leagues limit the amount of talent separation that can occur between teams, so it looks a bit like being stuck in a local minima in terms of talent development.

[huevosabio]

Mexico performs as you'll expect a third world country that loves football to perform, and the US performs as well as you would expect a first world country that is ambivalent to football to perform.

I think the real mystery is, how come Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay play so much better than what you would expect from relatively poor countries?

My guess is that their leagues are fairly developed industries, like you would expect in the first world.

[paulsen]

> My guess is that their leagues are fairly developed industries, like you would expect in the first world.

Pretty much, like in Europe, if you have any interest/talent in football, you enroll in your local club as a kid and go on from there, in Argentina you have a multitude of leagues until you reach Primera Division, so you have from 5 to 6 levels of competition in between organized directly by the Argentine Football Association, founded in 1891, also ran the first tournament in that same year, which makes it the oldest associated football league other than the British FA cup (1871).

Below that you have the regional/provincial leagues, the least populated province, Tierra del Fuego, has 2; Buenos Aires province has 70+ by itself.

[huevosabio]

Holy hell. Yea that sounds about right!

[eldaisfish]

Football in Brazil has history, legacy, and mind share. I can name several professional teams from Brazil - Flamenco, Corinthians, Santos, etc. I also know of River Plate, Rosario and Boca Juniors from Argentina. This points to the fact that Brazilian and Argentine teams are older than the Mexican teams.

I cannot name a single Mexican team, and that is partly because the oldest club dates back to the 1940s. The oldest Brazilian and Argentina clubs date back to the 1900s.

[loloquwowndueo]

> I cannot name a single Mexican team, and that is partly because the oldest club dates back to the 1940s.

Teams like Atlante and América were founded in 1916.

[sumanep]

We play football every time in Argentina, not to say in Brazil

[brudgers]

The Mexican Primera favors a unique type of athlete…players who can regularly play at 10,000 feet (3000m) because many matches are played in and around Mexico City. And other clubs are also above 5000 feet.

Add in daytime heat, night cold, humidity and smog and you get a very different practical reality that shapes the pace and tactics of the Primeria and soccer culture in general. In turn that shapes who succeeds as a soccer playing athlete.

[scythe]

This is an interesting theory. But do Mexican soccer players do much better at home games?

[brudgers]

Not clear what you are asking, but at the international level Azteca is notoriously advantageous…of course top European sides never visit so there’s no general empirical data.

And you won’t get much more from the world cup because the only ceded European side favored to play at Azteca is England in the round of 8.