When I saw that Mexico had beaten South Africa 2-0, in a game that featured three red cards, I didn’t even bat an eye. This kind of thing happens at the Azteca. Who among us, nationally speaking, has not finished a game at Estadio Azteca with nine players on the field?

It wasn’t until this morning, when I saw articles pointing out this leaves the 2026 edition of the men’s World Cup just one red card short of the total for the entire previous tournament, that I realized that not everyone is used to this.

So, to the world, may I offer a hearty welcome to CONCACAF! This is your life now: referees at the video monitor, carefully deliberating the most insane refereeing decisions you’ve ever seen. Players who have never punched another human being in their life punching an opposing player in full view of God and the referee, as if compelled by a magic spell. Operatic celebrations, theatrical dives, the whole panoply of human emotions expressed by a single CONCACAF midfielder in a ten-second spell, striking down the opposition only to then be struck down himself, retribution and karma via the helpful metric of the referee’s book.

The result also leaves Mexico with one foot in the quarterfinals, as it were. Only the 1994 World Cup, in the three-points-for-a-win era has been mathematically equivalent to this one; that year, 24 teams entered and 16 qualified for the knockout round. Four points was enough to see everyone through, except for in a historically insane Group E, where Mexico, Ireland, Italy, and Norway all finished with the exact same record: one win and one draw, with a goal difference of zero. Norway was the unlucky fourth-placed team, having scored just one goal in three games.

Should the hosts win Group A, they’d be lined up to play their first two knockout games at the Azteca, and no matter who the opponents are (perhaps England in the Round of 16!), American fans know that at the Azteca, Mexico is not to be trifled with.

One of the biggest changes for me over the past dozen or so years of being a soccer fan is that I find it increasingly difficult to reach the same levels of Mexico hatred that I once reached as a matter of routine. For decades, the most important thing about American soccer was not only that the USA win, but that Mexico lose; the “Dos a cero” series were some of the greatest soccer fan nights I’ve ever had.

Some of that changed with the USA raising its competitive level; it has ceased to be a historic event to see the USA come out on top against Mexico. With the advent of the Nations League, it’s also become less rare to see the countries play; in the last five years, the countries have played for a trophy four times and in a semifinal once, with the USA winning all but one of those games.

The true tipping point, though, might have come in November 2016, when - in the aftermath of an election in the United States in which it seemed to become a shibboleth, in certain quarters, that Mexico was some sort of evil empire that represented everything to blame about the United States - the two teams posed for a joint team photo before a World Cup qualifier.

If you didn’t agree that Mexico, nationally speaking, was some irredeemable monster - and I didn’t, and don’t - then it suddenly seemed needlessly bellicose to hate El Tri, to treat them as anything but an occasionally annoying neighbor.

It’s also impossible to see soccer culture in the United States as anything but Mexican-flavored. By many estimates, the most-watched soccer league in the United States is Liga MX. El Tri draws better in the USA than the USMNT does. To pretend that there’s some essential American spirit, one that sets the leagues and national teams apart from their southern brethren, feels virtually impossible.

I can’t say that I want Mexico to win, not exactly. About all I can say is that I feel a certain defensiveness about Mexico, a certain CONCACAF-solidarity protectiveness, the same way I feel about Canada - and to put Mexico on a level with Canada represents a huge shift in my feelings.

Speaking of Canada, today represents the last semi-calm day of the group stage, with both Canada and the USA kicking off their campaigns, against Bosnia-Herzegovina and Paraguay, respectively. I suppose this is the natural thing to happen, when a tournament has three hosts rather than just one; FIFA, which loves to stretch things out, gets to stretch out its host-kicks-off-the-tournament celebrations to two full days.

I’ll be on a flight for half of USA-Paraguay, because I am bad at planning, but I’m excited to see what the flight is like. The flight doesn’t have seat-back entertainment screens, so it won’t be an apples-to-apples comparison, but I’ve been on flights during NFL conference championship games, and seen planes where 85% of all the in-flight monitors are watching the exact same thing. It’ll be fascinating to see whether USA-Paraguay hits that level, whether the entire plane starts trying to stream the game at 8pm central time… or if it’s just one guy with a laptop, cursing a poor connection, a scene straight out of 2002.