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- FootBiz newsletter #145: World Cup special, Mexico analysis and news
FootBiz newsletter #145: World Cup special, Mexico analysis and news
PLUS: Why Scotland is about to lose something of great value
Ed Malyon
February 24, 2026 • Estimated Reading Time: 10 minutes
It would be difficult to begin this newsletter with anything but Mexico this week, mainly because I’ve been so necessarily consumed by the story.
On retreating from the bubble and returning to the real world a little bit yesterday, it occurred to me that perhaps not everyone was following the situation as closely, so allow me to explain.
Early on Sunday morning, government forces in Mexico conducted an operation that resulted in the killing of the country’s most wanted man, a cartel boss known as 'El Mencho’.
The longtime leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, El Mencho was the head of a huge organised crime/terrorist group that was responsible for drugs, murders and crime all over Mexico but obviously based out of the state of Jalisco. Objectively, most people would agree this is a good thing for the country.
As often happens when a cartel leader gets taken out, it triggered something of a backlash from the cartel, who sent out messages to groups affiliated with their operations to cause as much chaos as possible by way of revenge. And so they did, setting alight to shops, cars, buses and trying to block major roads.
For much of Mexico, life was pretty much as normal albeit there is an undeniable edginess. These cartel deaths and/or arrests can (and have, in the past) triggered a surge in violence not only between law enforcement and the cartel groups but also within the groups themselves as differing factions seek to fill the power vacuum. That is what normal people are wary of, and the government have sent nearly 10,000 troops to the west of the country to reassure regular citizens that they will be safe.
"There is calm, there is government, there are armed forces and there is a lot of coordination," president Claudia Sheinbaum said on Monday morning. She also revealed that El Mencho was tracked down through a romantic partner who had recently left his compound. There is some evidence that US government pressure was behind this operation happening now and Sheinbaum confirmed it did use some “complementary US intelligence”, though none of their forces were involved and the US-Mexico dynamic is a much wider discussion for another time.
In Jalisco itself, where the eponymous cartel is based, things were pretty scary by all accounts and I wouldn’t seek to minimise that. Tourists in the hotspot of Puerto Vallarta were told to shelter in place as burning vehicles poured smoke into the sky. Guadalajara, the state capital, was a similar picture as people stayed off the streets.
This is where football came into things.
Guadalajara is a World Cup host city, and as such, the city experiencing cartel violence less than four months before it is due to host its first match is suboptimal to stay the very least.
To differing degrees these World Cup panics happen every four years. I remember before the South Africa World Cup there were breathless reports on the safety (or lack thereof) in the country ahead of Africa’s first-ever Jules Rimet. Before the Brazil World Cup, when mass street protests had blighted the Confederations Cup a year earlier, my then-employer made us all do army-style survival training on what to do if we got caught up in political violence or unrest (rubber bullets, tear gas, kidnapping etc).
If Minneapolis had been a World Cup host city this summer then we would probably have heard a bit more questioning the USA’s suitability to be a host ahead of the upcoming tournament, given government troops were out on the streets killing innocent people in the name of immigration enforcement only weeks ago, but now it is the turn of Guadalajara, albeit necessarily, after Sunday’s events.
My overarching hope is that Sunday’s flare-up won’t be repeated, FIFA asks for further security guarantees and is given them and we continue as planned for June.
The logistical impracticalities of switching host cities at this point are almost too much of a headache to even consider, though you’d imagine FIFA are probably now forced to draw up some sort of contingency in case the bottom 10% of possible outcomes becomes something closer to reality.
As far as I am aware, there is no obvious alternative in Mexico (a stadium of required grading, capacity, hospitality facilities etc) and so the only option might be to find an American city in the same time zone (Denver? Phoenix?) to take on the responsibilities at short notice. That seems unlikely, difficult and maybe even impossible.
In the more immediate term, I would imagine FIFA are more concerned about March’s inter-confederation playoff mini-tournament that is scheduled for Guadalajara. As far as I can tell, that would be far easier to move. Miami or LA or Las Vegas could take on that event with only a couple of days’ planning. That isn’t to say it will be moved, or that it should, but the decision on that is far more pressing than of the World Cup proper. FIFA sources told us they were in wait-and-see mode, which sounds about right.
On Monday, burnt-out cars were cleared from streets in Jalisco
In the even more immediate term, Mexico’s friendly against Iceland on Wednesday at Queretaro’s La Corregidora stadium is set to go ahead as planned. I try not to bore people with Queretaro content too much as — while I am obsessed with our club — most people don’t particularly care about mid-table Liga MX teams, but a big reason for us choosing the club over other options we had in Liga MX was that it’s one of the safest cities and states in Mexico.
Our league fixture against Juarez on Sunday night was postponed out of an abundance of caution as to not divert police resources from where they might be far more needed, but in the end Queretaro has been safe and far from the issues being seen in Jalisco and we can simply reschedule Juarez’s visit for later in the season. In Mexico City, which is even further from Jalisco, Pumas’ fixture with Monterrey went ahead as normal on Sunday.
On Wednesday we’ll host the national team and then on Friday we’ll resume our league campaign at home to Santos Laguna and life will go on as normal, as I hope and expect it will all over Mexico. Having received a lot of questions about events this weekend, the description I have most often used to describe the feeling is “an uneasiness”. It is impossible to compare like-for-like but the sensation reminds me a bit of growing up in England when the IRA were active or in Spain during the years of ETA aggression.
As far as I understand it from reading more informed people than me and from talking to people in Mexico — and I would never claim to be an expert — the cartels are not in a position to take over cities or large, populated areas. Like the IRA or ETA, their aim is terror and intimidation of the masses, using the least resources possible, to assist the maintenance and acquisition of power. Thus, setting alight to a truck and blocking the highway with it functions as a striking visual for those seeing it in person, as well as those seeing the smoke from miles away and now many millions more gawping at the clips on social media with captions like “They’ve taken over the country” - only they haven’t.
But that’s why we also need to be extra careful.
On Sunday night as I was following the latest developments, there were several updates that didn’t add up. One example: Guadalajara airport was apparently taken over by armed gunmen, and foreign news outlets reported it as fact, only the airport released a confused statement clarifying that wasn’t true at all. Because it wasn’t.
Authorities tried to clarify the truth amid false media reports
Someone (or something) was deliberately trying to incite fear and confusion on social media, with false reports and imagery stemming from three accounts but amplified by 500 bots as to spread virally around the world in a flash. Its desired effect is to make the cartel seem bigger and stronger than they are, and regrettably is just another arm of the operations of groups like this now.
So some of what people are seeing on social media is not the reality of what is happening. The job for the Mexican government, FIFA and everyone involved is to focus on reality and making Mexico a safer place for everyone. In the medium to longer term, you would hope that taking out the most wanted person in the country would undoubtedly help achieve that.
It’s the short-term instability that has everyone on edge, and lends a little uncertainty to FIFA ahead of their global showpiece.
We’ll be covering this right up until the tournament’s opening fixture on June 11.
Anyway, hopefully we’ve done that topic justice.
Lots more World Cup/FIFA stuff below the paywall today, as well as some seismically bad news for fans of Scottish football clubs and a load more. If you don’t subscribe already, today could be the day to give it a go…
