Cementos Cruz Azul

Lore & Background

Cruz Azul was founded in the late 1920s in Jasso, Hidalgo, where cement company Cooperativa La Cruz Azul fostered a connection with football. Carlos Garcés López, a footballer, athlete and dentist employed by the cooperative, advocated for football to become the company's official sport. After a referendum on 22 March 1927, football was selected, and the team was formally established on 22 May 1927, with Garcés López as its first manager. The club competed in regional tournaments composed exclusively of company workers. In 1931, the cooperative faced financial difficulties during the Great Depression and was acquired by La Tolteca, but workers unionized and assumed control of the industrial facilities on 2 November. On 21 May 1932, the governor of Hidalgo decreed the 192 workers as collective owners of the plant. The company reestablished itself as a cooperative on 29 January 1934. Between 1932 and 1943, Cruz Azul won 15 consecutive league titles in a local amateur league in Hidalgo. The club was officially registered as a professional club after being invited to compete in the 1960–61 Copa de la Segunda División de México and earning promotion to the Primera División in the 1963–64 Segunda División season.

In Their Own Story

The bus pulls into the parking lot at half past seven, an hour before kickoff, and the air already tastes of cheap beer and diesel. You can hear them before you see them — a low, rolling hum from the east stand, the Cuarto Azul, where the drums have been beating since the players were still in the tunnel. A kid no older than twelve presses his face against the chain-link fence, mouth open, eyes tracking the blue shirts emerging one by one. His father has a hand on his shoulder, not pulling him back, just steadying him. The first chant hits and the concrete under your feet vibrates. A woman three rows up is already singing, eyes closed, arms raised, completely lost in it. The floodlights buzz to life and the pitch glows an almost violent green against the sea of blue. Somewhere in the crowd, a trumpet. Then another. The machine is turning. It has always been turning. It will not stop tonight.

Reader's Guide

Cruz Azul plays its home matches at Estadio Azteca. The club's home colors are blue and white. The club maintains a long-standing rivalry with América, a fixture commonly known as the Clásico Joven. According to several polls, Cruz Azul is the third-most popular team in Mexico, behind only América and Guadalajara. Within the Mexico City metropolitan area, it is generally regarded as the second-most supported club, behind América and ahead of Pumas UNAM. Together, these clubs are considered the Big Four of Mexican football.

Did You Know?

• Cruz Azul has won 6 CONCACAF Champions Cup/League titles (as of 2024), placing them among the most successful clubs in the competition's history.
• The club has 12 league runner-up finishes (as of 2024), though this is not the most in Mexican football—Club América, for example, has 13.
• Cruz Azul was the first team from CONCACAF to reach the final of the Copa Libertadores.
• The club achieved a continental treble in the 1968–69 season, becoming the first CONCACAF club and third worldwide to accomplish this feat.
• In 2026, Cruz Azul was named by the International Federation of Football History & Statistics as the 71st-best club in the world and the highest-ranked club in CONCACAF for the 2025 calendar year.