Mexico play with joy as killings fall for matches

Mexico playing – In Mexico’s Group A curtain-closer at the Azteca, the Czech Republic offered little to cling to—Mexico had already qualified as uncatchable leaders. But the tournament’s feel-good release has been measured far beyond football: the daily murder rate is reported

The Azteca has rarely looked like this for long stretches—like a city that has decided, for once, to let music carry the night.

Mexico’s World Cup had already turned the practical into the ceremonial when the tournament kicked off a fortnight ago. In a game against Czechia, Mexico “went through the motions” at the Azteca. It was less a contest than a lap of honour: this co-host nation for 2026 had clinched qualification first. as uncatchable leaders of Group A. with room for stars to be rested and the more restless members of the squad to savour the atmosphere.

Czechia, then, had the only tangible job left—though the larger story in Mexico is what happens when El Tri take the field.

When Mexico play World Cup ties, the daily murder rate is said to fall in the crime-beset country. On match days, it drops to around 30 fatalities every 24 hours. The contrast is stark. The average homicide tally so far this year is put at 70 a day. The reduction. as described here. holds in high places when Mexico win; if Mexico lose. the grim toll rises. and the incidence of domestic abuse rises with it.

This time, however, the result hardly mattered. Mexico’s “party night” came after wins over South Africa and South Korea, and even the anger that has followed widespread corruption has paused since the union of teachers failed to disrupt the tournament’s opening match on June 11.

Mexico had already qualified at the top of Group A before their final game with Czechia, and their run has brought a rare release to millions of Mexicans living inside an uneasy mix of economic and social problems and horrifying levels of violence.

Instead of charging barricades, many have been joining the streets—dancing nightly, drawn to the loudest music in the square at the foot of Mexico City’s towering statue of the Lady of Independence, Freedom from Spain, lifted high above the celebration.

For Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico’s first female president, the optimism comes with a calendar. She is hoping the team’s promising start “runs deep into the tournament. ” at least to the quarter-finals—an achievement Mexico reached when it hosted the first and second of its record three World Cups in 1970 and 1986.

If that run requires it, Mexico may have to overcome England in the last-16. There’s no guarantee the football is allowed to stay inside the lines. The piece makes the point that Tuchel, Kane and company cannot be expected to concern themselves with the country’s social context.

For Sheinbaum, though, the concern isn’t only football. If the England match happens, she will not be in attendance, as she wasn’t at the grand opening. Hostility to her administration is described as so intimidating that it kept her away.

Her unpopularity is set alongside figures that are meant to show how much. or how little. has changed under her watch. Since she succeeded her mentor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. homicides in 2026 are projected at 25. 550—about 8. 000 lower than at the time of the 2022 Qatar World Cup. Even with the reduction. the detail that distress Sheinbaum “in particular” is that matricides make up a frighteningly high percentage of the fatal toll.

The death count is not treated as the only catastrophe. The account also points to people who have simply vanished. It says that 134. 000 men. women and children have disappeared here in the last two years. with pictures pinned to trees along the city’s most fashionable paseos. With precious few of their bodies dug out of graves in dusty hillsides and dense woodland across the country. they are presumed to be victims of drug cartels. The gangs’ work is described as extending beyond killing into sex trafficking and organ harvesting.

The reach of those cartels is portrayed as large enough to compete with the state, as they are said to be wooing the public by building hospitals, schools and homes for the poor and needy while they hijack control of local government.

In the political arena. Sheinbaum’s position appears to have worsened in the way the tournament has been staged—and in the symbols that came with it. The piece says she was seen on television hosting a lavish banquet for the FIFA hierarchy and a gaggle of celebrities in the historic grandeur of Chapultepec Castle on the evening after the opening match. That happened while hundreds of thousands of Mexicans are living in poverty. only fractionally improved by a payment distributed to registered families.

The amount is given as 200 pesos a day—£10 in the comparison used here—and the reaction is captured bluntly: “Talk about tone deaf.”

Criticism has also been aimed at the cost of staging Mexico’s one-third of this World Cup while people go hungry. The rebuttal, as described, is that it brings national pride—and for now, “much joy to all.”

But the approach to England at high altitude on July 5 is framed with a warning wrapped inside the hope. If England do come. they will likely face a Mexican team playing for more than World Cup glory: for sporting lives and for the human lives of so many others—lives that. for the length of a match. appear to be counted differently in Mexico’s streets.

Mexico World Cup 2026 Azteca Czechia England Claudia Sheinbaum murder rate falls homicides 2026 projected missing people 134000 drug cartels Lady of Independence Group A qualification