In Mexico, greater investment in women’s soccer is starting to pay off

Mayra Pelayo was on the pitch for less than ten minutes when she scored one of the Mexico women’s national team’s most memorable goals.

Pelayo received the ball and quickly dribbled up the left flank off a lofty cross-field pass from Karen Luna. When she found a small opening between U.S. players Midge Purce and Emily Sonnett, she drilled a shot that easily passed goalkeeper Alyssa Naeher.

It was a moment of ecstasy for Pelayo, whose stoppage time goal in the CONCACAF W Gold Cup group stage sealed a historic win for Mexico. The team hadn’t defeated the U.S. in 14 years; this was the first time they did so on American soil.

“It just shows that our national team is growing so much,” Pelayo told The Athletic, “and there’s so much more to go through. But I think we’re on a really good path.”

After nearly a decade of strategic investments, the Mexican national team now finds itself able to compete with some of the best teams in the world, largely thanks to a thriving domestic league, and, more recently, the Mexican Football Federation’s decision to restructure its entire sporting department after the women’s senior side failed to qualify for the 2023 World Cup and 2024 Olympics.

“A strong women’s national team depends on having a strong domestic league at home, and a strong domestic league depends on having strong clubs,” says Andrea Rodebaugh, sporting director for the Mexican women’s national teams and a former national team player. “The league over the last years has grown, has strengthened, and more and more teams are beginning to invest in their women’s program, and that is being reflected on the national team.”

In late 2016, club owners from Liga MX, the top men’s league in Mexico, approved the creation of a parallel women’s league. The goal was to build and grow talent in Mexico to strengthen their national team and, eventually, establish a market that would become a top destination for foreign talent. There have been several marquee international signings in the league since, like Spain’s Jenni Hermoso who signed with Pachuca in 2022 and now plays for Tigres. The league famously landed now-Chelsea striker Mia Fishel, who signed with Tigres out of college over the National Women’s Soccer League’s Orlando Pride, which had drafted her in the first round.

Attracting top talent from all over the world bolsters the league’s development, and benefits those playing in it. That includes a majority of Mexico’s senior team.

“Eighty or 90% of the players on my team are in Liga MX,” said head coach, Pedro López, who was hired in 2022 to lead Mexico. “It is a strong league that allows the Mexican player to find, both at a professional and sporting level, a good place to develop, and it is growing every year. Each season it gets better, and they’re also generating the tools for young players to also have the same competitive environment.”

The growth of women’s soccer in Mexico can be linked to the game in the United States. Success in one country can translate to success in the other.

Before Liga MX got involved in the women’s game, Mexico’s federation had an arrangement with U.S. Soccer that gave Mexico the option to allocate players to NWSL clubs. That partnership ran from 2013 until 2016, when the Mexican federation said it would no longer send players to the NWSL due to the limited playing time given to its players. Not long after, Liga MX Femenil was formed.

Fast forward to 2024, both leagues are flourishing and working to grow the game even more. The NWSL and Liga MX Femenil announced plans for a 33-match tournament, dubbed the Summer Cup, which includes top teams from both leagues and will be played during the Olympic break.

In a joint statement, Liga MX Femenil’s director Mariana Gutierrez called the partnership “a great achievement for women’s football in our region and around the world.”

The nations’ desire to grow the women’s game in North America can also be seen in a joint bid to co-host the women’s World Cup in 2027. The winning bid will be announced by FIFA in May, and should the nations win hosting rights, it would be a boon for a region that’s coming fresh off the men’s World Cup in 2026.

“It would be a big plus for us,” said Rodebaugh, reflecting on the 1999 World Cup she competed in. “It was played in the United States, but in Mexico, just having qualified, gave exposure to the team and created this surge of interest and desire for little girls to play, which I would say was the beginning of what we have today.”

Securing hosting rights with the U.S. would mean an automatic bid for the Mexican national team in the next World Cup. But, until then, the team is working to reach that stage on its own.

Head coach Pedro Lopez has emphasized player development (Omar Vega/Getty Images)

Before his tenure with Mexico, López established himself as a coach able to foster and develop young teams, with successful stints with several of the youth national teams in his native Spain. Mexico’s recent run to the Gold Cup semifinals is a testament to López’s successful direction of the senior team so far, but he knows his team must build on this momentum to reach their ultimate goal of returning to the World Cup and Olympic stages. That’s why the team recently organized two international friendlies with Colombia and Australia for its annual Mex Tour W in the U.S.

“These types of rivals are the ones we want to face and overcome,” López said. “We are on a good path, and this last Gold Cup showed us that we can, (and) that we want to, and we need to prove it with every opportunity we have.”

Mex Tour W also helps the women’s team connect with its existing fan base in the U.S. The tour is organized by Soccer United Marketing, the marketing arm of Major League Soccer, through a longstanding partnership between SUM and the Mexican federation. The tour has existed for the men’s side since 2002, and last year for the first time featured the women’s team. The men’s team has long garnered sell-out crowds in the U.S., leaning into a cross-country rivalry with the U.S. men’s national team. That rivalry may soon be budding in the women’s game, too.

“Mexico has just begun to create this rivalry, because of the result in the Gold Cup,” Rodebaugh said. “Suddenly, everybody turned around and looked at Mexico and now, every time we play, I know that there’s going to be a little bit more rivalry between the two teams.”

Rodebaugh, who was hired as Mexico’s sporting director in 2022, said the Mex Tour offers players more time to play together and build on the culture that López has fostered since becoming the coach.

“This tour allows us to compete against teams that are going to help us grow, teams that qualified to the World Cup last year, teams that have qualified to the Olympics this year,” Rodebaugh said. “And it’s those games that help us to continue to grow, which is our objective, as well as to begin to work with younger players that will, in two or three years, be coming up from lower age groups.”

Those lower age groups have also seen their share of success as the game grows domestically. Last year, Mexico won the CONCACAF U-20 Championship, topping Canada in the semifinals and the U.S. in the final. Nineteen-year-old goalkeeper Itzel Velasco emerged as a standout player in the tournament, earning her first call-up to the senior side for the Mex Tour this month. Velasco also plays for Club América in Liga MX.

Having competitions like the Mex Tour also helps grow that surge in interest stateside, by inspiring a new generation of Mexican-American talent to see playing for the Mexican national team as a desirable option.

That’s why for Pelayo, who was born in the U.S. and grew up in California, scoring against the U.S. at Dignity Health Sports Park in Los Angeles was so special. Her family, she says, was at the game, which only added to the night’s electric atmosphere. She described feeling like there were more Mexican fans there than fans for the U.S.

It’s that sense of pride that pushed Pelayo to play in Mexico. The 27-year-old is a winger for Tijuana in Liga MX, and while she made her debut for the senior team in September, she previously was part of several U.S. youth national teams, from U-15 through U-23, until 2017.

“Obviously, being born in the U.S., you always say, ‘I’m gonna play for this country.’ But after I came and moved to Mexico, and played professionally here, I just fell in love with the country,” Pelayo said. “I fell in love with what my family came from, and, honestly, this culture is so much more welcoming. I love it so much. I think that’s what made me kind of decide to play for this country, to back it up and to back up where I came from.”

Mexico and the U.S. will meet again on July 13 at Red Bull Arena in Harrison, N.J., in the Americans’ penultimate send-off before the Paris Olympics. It’s a rematch that, before the Gold Cup, some might have assumed would automatically go in the U.S.’s favor.

“Mexico is getting a lot more respect for their soccer,” Pelayo says. “It started off with the Liga MX and it has progressed so much. … It’s going to get better each year.”

(Photo: Michael Janosz/ISI Photos/Getty Images)