Antiamericanismo: How One Journalist's Pen Invented Mexico's Most Hated Club

2026/76. Two numbers. Yet those two numbers have come to stand as the founding year of an entire cultural war in Mexican football. The man pronouncing them is not an angry fan, nor a terrace hooligan. He is José Ramón Fernández — ESPN panelist, Excélsior columnist. On camera, a confession delivered almost without shame: "I started speaking badly about América in 2026/76." The purpose, one single aim — to manufacture a rivalry. The opponent, Pumas. And he calls himself the "father," the "institution," even the "rector" of antiamericanismo. For the broad bloc of neutral fans who hate Club América, the origin of that hatred is supposedly this one man. At first hearing, it sounds like the height of vanity. On a second pass, an uncomfortable question surfaces: if a club can genuinely be made hateful, exactly how far does the power of football journalism reach?

I remember my 2026 Barishal Transfer Desk. From a tea-stall argument about Neymar's €222m move to Paris Saint-Germain, I built a Facebook Live show. The lesson of that show was singular — judge every rumour on a chain of evidence, never on emotion. Reading Mexico's antiamericanismo story, I realised it teaches the same lesson from the opposite direction. Here, evidence did not come first; a pen came first — and that pen's heat taught an entire nation to hate a club. I follow the paperwork until it sweats, then I call the source. In this story, the amusing part is that the "source" himself claims to be the author.

A match played off the pitch

This is not a match report, nor a transfer saga. It is a media-sociology explainer. In Mexico's Liga MX there is a club named América, nicknamed "Las Águilas" — the Eagles. After the Coapa training ground in Mexico City they are called "El Equipo de Coapa." And the intense, almost personal hostility toward them among a large share of neutral fans is what this essay is about — antiamericanismo. Just as Germany has its "Mia San Mia" chant, Argentina a comic anti-River culture, England the "ABU" (Anyone But United) movement — every league has a club everyone wants to see lose. In Mexico that club is América, and the intensity of the hatred is described as "un odio sin precedentes" — an unprecedented hatred.

But my interest is not in how intense that hatred is. My interest lies in the question of whether the hatred was always there, or whether someone built it. Because in the transfer market, most of what I see is constructed narrative: an agent leaks a rumour, a media outlet inflates it, a club uses it for leverage, and three months later nobody remembers who said it first. América's hatred story follows the same mechanics — only the expiry date is fifty years.

The power geography of Mexican football

Liga MX is Mexico's top flight. América is the country's most successful, most trophy-laden club. The article states plainly that América is "the most winning team in Mexico," and identifies that habit of winning as sufficient reason for the hatred. From my years of watching matches, I can say this argument sounds right at the first level — a team that keeps winning accumulates resentment. But that is half the story. Barcelona's Cruyff era, Bayern's Bundesliga monopoly, Juventus's Calciopoli era — nowhere did the hatred reach América's intensity. So what extra ingredient does Mexico have?

The answer likely lies in the club's institutional identity, not its playing style. América is often treated in Mexican football as the club of a major media conglomerate — its relationship with the country's largest television network is a constant topic of football conversation. The article never says this outright, but one line of the source makes the implication plain: the opposition to América is really opposition to "its environment" and "the context the television network gave it." The grievance, in other words, is not against a playing style but against a power structure. That is the key evidentiary point: is the hatred born on the pitch, or in the boardroom?

Let me separate one thing. The structural link between América and a major broadcaster is long-discussed in Mexican football circles, but the original article does not establish that claim with confirmed sourcing. It is external context and should not be taken as verified fact. The line between fact and inference must stay drawn — without that discipline in agent-liaison journalism, rumour and truth collapse into one.

From pen to terrace: how hatred is manufactured

Now to the article's explosive claim. Fernández says that in 2026/76, as Pumas rose to become one of the powers of national football, he began using negative language about América — in order to create a rivalry. In other words, a "clásico" was deliberately manufactured. Media theory has a name for this — agenda-setting. Put simply, the media does not only tell us what to think; it tells us what to think about, and whom to think against. If Fernández genuinely did this, it is a textbook case of sports media: the journalist did not merely report audience sentiment, he produced it.

But here my transfer-insider instincts go on alert. A fifty-year-old recollection on which a man claims "I alone built this hatred" is a single-source claim. In the transfer market we know this source type well. An agent calls and says, "This deal happened only because of me." In reality the deal happened for ten reasons — club need, wage structure, the player's family, sponsors, taxes. The agent simply inflates his own slice. Fernández's claim is the same. Yes, he struck a chord. But why an entire country began singing it is not answered by his pen alone.

Still, he has said one genuinely rare thing. In sports media, very few journalists publicly admit they themselves constructed a narrative and are its character. Fernández's confession is, in that sense, a rare document. "The tunnel tells you the price before the crowd knows the score" — true of players, and just as true of journalists. He himself admits he fixed the price before the crowd understood anything.

Three causes, one irony

Now to the article's central tension, without which the whole analysis goes wrong. The article offers two separate, mutually opposed causes for América's hatred.

One — América is "the most winning team in Mexico," and that winning is sufficient reason for hatred. This is the organic explanation: success invites envy.

Two — the hatred was manufactured, deliberately created by a journalist. This is the engineered explanation.

These two cannot both be fully true. If the hatred was manufactured, then "winning causes hatred" is at best incomplete. If the hatred truly stems only from winning, then Fernández's claim is exaggeration. The article does not resolve the tension; it merely sets the two side by side. And that is the most important point in the analysis — where the two causes undercut each other.

I think the truth sits in the middle. Winning is the fuel; the media strikes the match. Without fuel, no pen could do anything; but with fuel, no match, no fire. In 2026/76 América was winning, Pumas was rising — between those two peaks there was already a natural conflict ingredient. Fernández did not supply that ingredient; he fanned it. The distinction sounds small, but analytically it is vast.

The economics of a villain brand

Now to my own ground — money, contracts and market value. Is a club hated by an entire country a loss or a gain?

At first glance, a loss — what sponsor wants to associate with a club everyone hates? But media economics runs the other way. More eyes, more advertising. Every América match means nationwide curiosity — some watch out of love, some to watch them lose. Two audiences, one broadcaster, one stadium gate. This is villain-brand equity — the exchange value of hatred. Those who hate América do not buy América shirts, but they do watch América matches — because hatred, too, is a dependency.

Here lies a subtle calculation in the transfer market. Because América's brand is intensely polarised, its players' market value is double-edged. If an América star is hated by rival fans, his endorsement market shrinks — broad, neutral value sells higher. But because América's own fan circle is intense, loyalty within the brand is high — shirt sales, memberships, tickets all durable. Hatred does not reduce América's income; it builds a separate revenue column. Agents understand this. So América's buying and selling runs on a strange logic — the club's "villain" identity is often itself a bargaining tool.

At league level it is clearer still. The more anti-América emotion grows, the more pro-América emotion grows. A single club anchors the league's entire emotional economy. For the broadcaster it is a gold mine; for the league a permanent source of attention. América is one of Mexico's financially strongest clubs partly because of this two-way emotion. Here, hatred is an asset.

The irony nobody wants to see

Perhaps the article's most subtle line is this — "the team is a winner, plays well; but I hate its environment, its surrounding context." This is the real key. Fernández does not hate América's football; he hates the media power that has grown up around América. And the amusing part: he is part of that power — because he built that narrative. So the man accusing power is himself the architect of that power.

This irony is the core resonance of antiamericanismo. If the article says the hatred was manufactured, and the object of that hatred is really "media power," then: media manufactured hatred against a club, and the real reason for that hatred is media itself. The circle closes.

This is not a Mexican peculiarity. Wherever a big broadcaster and a big club are closely tied, fans raise exactly this grievance — "this club is the broadcaster's child, their wins are written in advance." In Mexico it is América; in Spain, at times Real Madrid; in Italy, Juventus. Each time the grievance centres not on pitch performance but on boardroom power. So I would say antiamericanismo is bigger than anti-América football hatred — it is an anti-media-power grievance wearing a club's mask.

Dhaka's story, Barishal's desk

I cannot stay silent here, because my own football life is full of this exact pattern. In Bangladesh, Abahani and Mohammedan — how much of that rivalry is organic, how much media-built? I have asked that question many times, sat in debates, faced sources. Honestly, much of the two clubs' "enmity" was the wind of journalists and commentary — those writing the story like a conflict better when it exists, to read, to watch, to hear. The 2026/76 América-Pumas episode therefore does not sound new to me; only the scale differs.

There is another parallel. In 2026, when COVID emptied the stadiums, I broke the news of Abahani's 50% wage cut and six player releases from Barishal before the club's official statement. My agent-liaison network did the work. That experience taught me something true in the América story too: "When the stands go silent, the wage sheets start talking." When the crowd is gone, media narrative and boardroom arithmetic separate. To find the real context behind América's narrative, one must stand outside the crowd.

A caution, though. This 2026/76 claim is a fifty-year memory in one source's voice. Some will build a conspiracy theory on it — "the media runs everything." I will not fall into that trap. In transfer journalism I keep three layers apart: documented fact, reasonable inference, and invented story. Here the documented fact is one — Fernández publicly says he began speaking against América at that time. The reasonable inference is that he shaped a large part of a narrative. The invented story is that he alone built fifty years of hatred. The third does not have enough evidence.

The next domino

The question this leaves is not for América but for the whole football-media industry. If a journalist can genuinely build a rivalry, and a built rivalry can last fifty years, exactly how much power does the media hold?

My answer: a lot, but not alone. A narrative survives only when there is a structure to feed it — a broadcaster, a column, a panel, and a club that never wants to shed the villain role, because that role is part of its income. Fernández is part of that structure, not its driver.

If América wins another title in the coming seasons, the hatred will thicken — and the club will earn more from it. So will the league. That is the enduring profit of a manufactured rivalry: nobody loses, everyone just watches more. My question is, who actually burns in this system? Only the one who goes to the stadium truly loving the football, stands at midfield and wonders — whom exactly am I hating, and who built this hatred for me?