Finding El Tri in California

Quick, what's the most popular team in America? The Yankees? The Cowboys? Nope. More people support the Mexican national soccer team than either of those hulking money-dumps or any other team in the country, including the U.S. men's national team. El Tri are a weight-bearing pillar of identity for millions, and they make a point to cater to their expatriate fanbase

The team, which has a promotional contract with Soccer United Marketing (a subsidiary of the MLS), will play eight games in the United States this year, and just three in Mexico (including two recently announced home games at Estadio Azteca). On Saturday, I joined 67,150 people at Levi's Stadium in suburban Santa Clara for the most recent one, a match against Chile and El Tri's first game back together since they crashed out of the World Cup.

I've been to one international match before. I saw the USA beat Azerbaijan in May at the old 49er's stadium up in actual San Francisco, and the game was a perfect fit for the lurching vestigial Candlestick Park. Soccer is growing in America or whatever, but it was like a church inside Candlestick.

Levi's was the diametric opposite. The parking lot where I started my move to the stadium was a mile out, but it was buzzing. There were two full bands holding down sizable dance floors. It seemed like every fourth car had brought their own speaker set. Live music jostled for sonic positioning with whatever was on the radio and the free-form hum was regularly pierced with someone half-yelling "Cielito Lindo" or a group firing off a big "AAAAAAAAAAY PUTO!" That slur-chant caught Mexico serious flak during the World Cup, but it was ubiquitous. Everything was a loud, chaotic pulse of life and it was all green, red, and white.

As someone who does not look like a fan of the Mexico at all, I was swarmed as soon as I got there. Fans peppered me with calls of "¡Estas perdido!" and people kept confusedly asking me who I supported, a proxy question for "Dude, why are you here?" This wasn't a space for neutrals. I quaffed Modelos out of a cooler and tried to learn songs from some dudes in comically ornamental luchador masks. Every Chilean who showed their ass got shouted down, and I saw two fights on the walk to the stadium. I didn't detect an air of menace so much as a sense that the emotional stakes surrounding the team were hefty. It was a celebration, people were pumped to see their team and if it spilled over the edges, it spilled over the edges.

International teams don't play that much. Mexico only has 15 games in 2014 and 11 of them are formally meaningless. Saturday's scoreless tie with Chile didn't determine participation in the next round of anything, but it still mattered, even for the team as Soccer Organization. For all the constraints put on national sides—time, space, the club calendar—they are constantly in motion. Player pools ebb and flow. There is always another tournament to think about qualifying for on the horizon, always another mysterious youngster ready to break into a first team somewhere across the Atlantic. The life cycle of a national team is one of cyclical scattering and reassembly. When the Mexican team reforms itself every few months, its purpose and composition are different every time. Raul Jimenez didn't come to California this week, but his recent ascension to the Atletico Madrid first team makes him one the most important players of the moment. His narrative arc hasn't looped to El Tri yet, but it will. Players switch clubs all the time, but for the most part, the national team doesn't move.

Both Chile and Mexico left Brazil with bitter memories. Saturday's game was an exorcism of those memories, a way to detox the national psyches and move on. I saw hundreds of people wearing variations of one particular shirt, where the image of Arjen Robben's infamous falling heel turn, which more or less sent Mexico home, is memorialized and gilded with a loud "¡NO ERA PENAL!" above it. I saw a few large, unwieldy signs with the motto. There's catharsis in a mass-participation penance like that. El Tri diehards all fell in that same pitfall trap together. But the team has more games, more stuff to qualify for. Nobody was dwelling on the awfulness. They were simply having one last moment of reckoning before the leap into the next cycle.

And the next cycle started the day after Mexico lost to the Dutch. Walking around before the game, I quickly forgot that El Tri got booted out the back door two months ago. Most people I talked to wanted to talk about Hector Herrera's rise at Porto or Jimenez's imminent Champions League glory with Atleti. Russia was calling, and the team's gold medal-winning generation had four years to start delivering on the tantalizing promise they flashed in London.

The team Miguel Herrera trotted out was geared for the future. Andres Guardado got the captaincy for the first time, and everything the team did flowed out from Guardado and his midfield partner Hector Herrera. Up top, Giovani Dos Santos was still as talented and mercurial as ever. He never seized his chances with much fervor, but he made moves all game long. Mexico didn't look out of their depth, but they seemed like a team trying to figure itself out. National teams tend to look like this, as they never get the necessary practice time together.

Club money is more powerful than patriotism, so players never get the time they need to gel, and international breaks are treated like nuisances by clubs who have to risk the health of their assets in meaningless games. National football associations and private leagues will always disagree on the value of international games, simply because top players already play too much soccer. A weekend off to rest in the middle of the EPL season might seem more important than a friendly across an ocean. In the end, club form dictates a player's earnings, and injuries during international duty jeopardize their ability to make a living. It's easy, then, to imagine a future where international soccer doesn't matter as much, where clubs flex their muscles and more players like Eden Hazard and Romelu Lukaku miss national team games because of mysterious "small injuries."

It was a surprise then to see Chile roll out their A-team against Mexico. Even Arturo Vidal, who's still recovering from a meniscus tear, suited up. Vidal spent this summer in limbo, lingering near a move to Manchester United. With the type of cash United were prepared to throw at Vidal, it would have made sense to rest up as much as possible and lock down that money while it was right there. But he played every meaningful minute of Chile's World Cup. Representing Chile is a huge deal to him, and while players have to think about money, getting a chance to lead a national team is rare. The scarcity of opportunities to pull on a Chile or Mexico shirt serves as an incentive to take every one. For ascendant players, a call-up is always a carrot. Club success comes with money and notoriety, but international success transcends that. Win a Champions League and you'll be rich. Win a World Cup and you're a legend.

I didn't think I'd get to see Alexis Sanchez, Vidal, Gary Medel, or Mauricio Isla play at Levi's, but all four played almost the whole game. Chile were tuning up for the Copa America next year, while Mexico was looking ahead to the Gold Cup, trying to assemble a roster that would click. Both clubs wanted to win and come off the international break with good signs about their futures. It was feisty. Alexis went out his way to swashbuckle with Mexican defenders. He seemed to want to try and execute the highest degree of difficulty move every time, seeking out opponents and then attempting to work out of smaller and smaller spaces, like a stuntman trying to jump a motorcycle through successively tighter flaming rings. Guardado acquitted himself well in his first turn as captain. He set a fast tempo and was up for every marauding run from Vidal. Guillermo Ochoa, folk hero of Mexico's World Cup, did well to save the game's only shot on goal.

Despite that lone effort on frame, the match buzzed with intensity. This wasn't USA-Azerbaijan, or any kind of exhibition match. Any period of quiet lasting longer than 30 seconds was unacceptable, and some cheer would start again to fill the silence. Aside from the old dudes in front of me who spent most of the game on their phones showing each other pictures of themselves with trucks, the game held everyone's attention.

It was a prolonged moment, a single meaningless game. Afterwards, the players would diffuse back to their clubs and fans would go home. The Mexican national team exists only in the abstract most of the time, its pieces scattered throughout the world, but that is what gives it such a critical valence when it comes together. They exist as an idea but when they take form and play, it's a holiday. Guardado spent the national anthem grinning like a damn fool and yelling every word. He was basking in the light of his captaincy. In Santa Clara, California, he was home.