When people claim that Mexico has less of a football tradition than the major powers, it’s impossible to ignore the various aspects that make the Aztec nation one of the most football-mad. That’s why it’s worth remembering the first World Cup, when the Mexican national team traveled for nearly a month to participate in the opening match. Thus, the first match in World Cup history featured Mexicans as protagonists.
The dates set for the first major world tournament were July 13-30, 1930, and on that occasion, it was thanks to an invitation from Uruguay. Many European teams declined the trip due to the length of the journey (airplanes didn’t exist yet), and so Mexico secured a privileged spot. However, this meant a 28-day journey by ship and a little longer by land.
The Mexican team’s journey began on June 2nd when they departed from Mexico City and traveled to the port of Veracruz. From there, they set sail for Havana and later New York, where they played a friendly match and bought soccer balls. Their next destination (along with the US national team) was Uruguay, with a stopover in Rio de Janeiro, where they trained at Botafogo’s facilities.
The curious thing is that despite acquiring soccer balls to “train” during the trip, they did very little actual training with them. The reason for this unusual decision was to avoid losing their training equipment, as it would easily blow away at sea. Despite this, they arrived to become the first national team—along with France—to play a match in a World Cup.
To be perfectly honest, that World Cup was a disaster in terms of results. The team was thrashed 4-1 in their opening match against France. Their second match was a 3-0 loss to Chile, and their third was another painful defeat, this time 6-3 against Argentina. However, at that time it was not possible to talk about competing with the national teams, but the experience was something that will remain for posterity.
Source: tvazteca
