Mexico’s World Cup run ended on Sunday night with a 3-2 loss to England, a defeat that sent El Tri out in the round of 16 even as the match left the team with something it had not had at the start: a country leaning in behind it.
The result came after five games that carried Mexico farther than many expected and ended at Estadio Azteca in the 101st minute, after England had built a 2-0 lead and Jude Bellingham struck twice in three minutes. Mexico answered with a goal of its own, and fans at the stadium kept pushing, chanting “Si se puede” as the match stretched deep into stoppage time. Javier Aguirre’s side had opened the tournament with a difficult victory against South Africa, then beat South Korea in its second group-stage match to clinch the group, a turn that helped turn doubt into belief.
That belief had already begun spilling beyond the field. The phrase “y si si?” appeared on the backs of national team jerseys, on soccer billboards and even on eggs, while LED screens at each Mexico City airport gate projected it in red, white and green. It spread because it was simple enough to be repeated by players and fans alike, and because it answered a familiar habit of caution with a cleaner dare: keep going, see what happens, trust the run. For a team that had often been defined by folding under pressure, the tournament offered a rare stretch in which support seemed to move in the other direction.
There is still the hard fact of the exit. Mexico is out, and the round of 16 is as far as this team went. But Guillermo Martínez, who spoke for the group after the defeat, said, “The legacy is family,” adding that the squad started out with no one believing in it and grew strong enough to carry its spirit to the people. He said the public felt represented because the team fought to the very end. That is the part that will linger after the score line fades: not a title, not a trophy, but a reset in the bond between the national team and the country that follows it. The next test is not defined yet, and that absence matters. If Mexico is to turn this tournament into a blueprint for 2030, the hope it restored will have to become something more durable than a good month in the World Cup.
For now, the lasting image is not of the loss itself but of a team that kept pushing while 80,843 people watched and believed it might still find a way back.
