Mexico aims for soccer redemption

Many team members share this inferiority complex, says Mr. Aguilera, who has traveled with the national team for the past decade as the soccer correspondent for the country's leading sports paper, Esto. "When we go to Honduras or El Salvador, the media is there and we get an escort to the hotel," he says. "When we come to the US there are always problems and delays at immigration. They have no idea who we are."

On several occasions, he says, Jesus Arellano, a midfielder who shares a last name with notorious jailed drug trafficker Felix Arellano, has been taken in for questioning by immigration officers at US airports. "There is no respect," says Aguilera, shaking his head.

Mexican fans have countered these perceived swipes with their own wallops of disrespect, leading to nasty run-ins on match day. US players have been pelted with beer bottles, batteries, and racial epithets, which led to the US Soccer Federation to send a letter of complaint to its Mexican counterpart last year after an Olympic qualifier in Guadalajara. During that February match, boos almost drowned out the singing of the Stars and Stripes, a US flag was burned, and several fans chanted "Osama, Osama," as the Americans left the field.

This time around, says Aguilera, the Mexicans are aiming their ire at US player Landon Donovan, who scored the second goal in Korea, and who also urinated on a practice field in Guadalajara. National TV picked up his transgression, and Mexicans went ballistic. "It said everything about US treatment of Mexicans," says Aguilera. "Let's just say, people are not pleased to see him."

Sunday's game will be the second of 10 qualifiers, with the top three teams in the six-team North and Central American CONCACAF region advancing to next year's World Cup in Germany. Win or lose, both the US and Mexico are expected to advance, along with Costa Rica.

For the US, which is on a 16-match unbeaten streak, victory here would be sweet. More important, however, it would indicate how far the Americans have come since starting a national team more than 50 years after Mexico.

But most of the fanaticism still resides south of the border.

"There is an interesting twist to the rivalry," says Franklin Foer, author of "How Soccer Explains the World." "Mexico has so much more emotionally invested in these games than the US. If Mexico wins, it's a major national event. If the US wins, it hardly creates a ripple back home. That makes US wins so much more painful for Mexico. It serves to highlight how little attention the US pays to its neighbor."

Popular striker Francisco "Kikin" Fonseca sees it otherwise. "Soccer is in our blood," he says. Mexico wants to prove something to America, "but, we win for ourselves. That is satisfaction enough."

• Ms. Harman is Latin America bureau chief for The Christian Science Monitor and USA Today.

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