América vs Cruz Azul

Lore & Background

Cruz Azul was founded in 1927 in Jasso, Hidalgo, by workers of the cement cooperative Cooperativa La Cruz Azul. The club won 15 consecutive amateur league titles in Hidalgo between 1932 and 1943. It earned promotion to the Primera División in 1964 and has never been relegated. The club achieved a continental treble in 1968–69 and later became the first club worldwide to win the continental treble twice.

In Their Own Story

The floodlights at Estadio Azteca hum to life and the air smells of grass and cheap beer and the particular electricity that only a Cruz Azul away section can generate. Twenty thousand voices in blue, packed into a single end of the stadium, shaking the concrete. A young América midfielder, barely twenty, feels the weight of it in his calves before the ball is even kicked. He has played in front of the Azteca a hundred times. This is different. The Cruz Azul ultras have painted the stands in a single, unbroken wave of blue, and somewhere in that wave a woman is singing a song her grandfather taught her in a cement yard in 1953. The referee's whistle cuts through. The ball rolls. And for ninety minutes, two halves of the same city forget they share a skyline.

Reader's Guide

Cruz Azul plays its home matches at Estadio Azteca. The club maintains a long-standing rivalry with América, known as the Clásico Joven. Cruz Azul is the third-most popular team in Mexico and the second-most supported club in the Mexico City metropolitan area.

Did You Know?

• Cruz Azul was founded on 22 May 1927.
• The club holds the joint-record for most CONCACAF Champions Cup/Champions League titles with seven.
• Cruz Azul has the most league runner-up finishes in Mexican football history (12).
• The club was the first CONCACAF team to reach the Copa Libertadores final.