da bet7： Mexico has dreams of being "a world power in women's soccer", and La Tri’s run to the Gold Cup semi-finals has only highlighted its rise

da imperador bet： Mexico’s historic win over the United States women’s national team at the W Gold Cup seemed to come out of nowhere. The U.S. had won 16 games on the bounce against its neighbour, keeping clean sheets in each of the last six. Given Mexico hasn’t qualified for either of the last two World Cup tournaments or any of the last five Olympic Games either, even a USWNT in transition was expected to win this game.

Except that’s not painting the full picture. Mexico’s 2-0 triumph over the U.S., its first victory over the four-time world champion in 14 years, and its progression to the semi-finals of this Gold Cup, by way of an entertaining 3-2 win over Paraguay, have been anything but out of the blue.

For the last eight years, Mexico has been building towards a moment like the one it is enjoying right now. With a domestic league that is growing at an exponential rate, a focus on developing the next generation and some fantastic results for the national team at youth level, it has been a matter of when, rather than if, La Tri would piece it all together on the big stage.

And now that we are finally seeing it come to fruition, it feels like a watershed moment. “I think this is the start of a new era,” Lizbeth Ovalle, scorer of the first goal against the USWNT, said after that incredible win. She could well be right.

GettyChange of direction

Eight years ago, it was rare for Mexico’s top talent to be playing at home. Indeed, when La Tri last played at a Women's World Cup in 2015, just three names on its 23-player roster represented Mexican clubs. The top league in Mexico wasn’t professional and, with a lack of coverage and support, Mexican players were instead allocated in the NWSL, the top league in the United States.

It meant lots of Mexico’s top talents could play in one of the best leagues in the world, but it’s hard for a nation to grow in women’s soccer when almost all of its stars aren’t even in the country. With there also concerns about the playing time that some of these players got in the U.S., in 2016 the Mexican Football Federation (FMF) decided to take a new route. Mexican players would stop being allocated in the NWSL and a new domestic league would launch instead: Liga MX Femenil.

AdvertisementGettyFocused on Mexico

Liga MX Femenil has always had specific regulations in place to enhance the development of Mexican talent. To begin with, it was an Under-23 league with just two overage players allowed per club. All of these players had to be born in Mexico.

Over time, these regulations have changed. The age limit was slowly and steadily raised until being removed completely, replaced by a rule that requires clubs to allocate 1,000 minutes of game time per tournament to U20 players and the establishment of an U17 league. Foreign-born Mexican players were permitted to participate from the third season onwards and each team was granted two international spots in season five, a number that has since grown to four.

“The media or people always ask: ‘How can we take our best players offshore?’ And I always ask: ‘Why do we want to send our best players overseas and not bring the best players to our league?’” Mariana Gutierrez Bernardez, head of Liga MX Femenil, said in long conversation with GOAL during that fifth season. “Our vision is not to take our best players offshore, it’s that the best players come here because we are going to be that top league. We're very ambitious on that.”

Getty ImagesInternational flavor

The league has since welcomed lots of international stars, including United States forward Mia Fishel, Nigeria goal-machine Uchenna Kanu, Colombia icon Catalina Usme and two former Barcelona stars, Andrea Pereira and Jennifer Hermoso, the latter of whom won the World Cup last year as a Pachuca player.

The limits on these international spots and the rules in place regarding minutes for young players mean this star power doesn’t restrict Mexican talent, either. Compare Mexico’s 2015 World Cup roster to this year’s Gold Cup roster and it is totally different. Instead of just three players playing at home, now only three players play abroad. The U.S. is the only other nation at the Gold Cup to have so many of its players in its own domestic league.

"Since international players are allowed to play in our league, I think that made the league take a huge step forward in terms of the physicality, in terms of tactical play," Itzel Gonzalez, who plays for Club America and Mexico, told . "I see different teams adopting different styles of play. I think that's really interesting to see how that's going to develop, having teams with stronger identities. The type of players that we have as a country are influencing the style of play in different teams and also obviously at the national-team level."

Having these foreign players with different experiences is only beneficial for the young talent coming through, too. Can you imagine what Alice Soto, Mexico’s most promising teenage talent, has learned from playing alongside Hermoso? What an experience to get at 17 years old.

Throw in the increased interest in Liga MX Femenil from abroad, which has resulted in numerous international friendlies for clubs across the league, against teams from the U.S., Germany, England, Spain and more, and the players and teams across Mexico are getting plenty of opportunities to improve.

Promise for the future

That minimum game time rule that Liga MX Femenil has put in place for Mexico’s young talent is also, unsurprisingly, having an impact on the youth national teams. Last year, La Tri won the CONCACAF U20 Championship for just the second time in its history, beating Canada in the semifinals and the U.S. in the final.

Mexico has always had a team capable of challenging for CONCACAF honors at youth level, consistently reaching finals with the U20s and U17s, but to get over the line and win the whole thing felt significant.

The federation’s big challenge has been in progressing these young talents through the national-team setup in a fluid way that helps it grow into a team that could also have success at senior level. Appointing Monica Vergara, a woman who led Mexico to its first World Cup final at any level with the U17s in 2018, as head coach of La Tri in 2021 felt like a step in the right direction, then.