Jon Arnold - @ArnoldcommaJon
HOUSTON — Supporters welcomed the team buses with flares and songs. The carne was sizzling on the grill. Everywhere you looked, fans were either in the bright yellow shirt of Tigres or the blue-and-white stripes of Rayados. On Tuesday night, Houston was Monterrey North.
That’s nothing new. The South Texas city sits fewer than 500 miles from Monterrey, and the passion for the two first-division teams from Nuevo Leon extends far beyond the Rio Grande. Still, it’s not every day a Clásico Regio comes to town.
In fact, it had been more than a decade since the rivals’ last meeting outside of Monterrey, a 2010 Superliga tilt at Robertson Stadium, and even longer since they met in a direct knockout match in the United States. That’s why the Leagues Cup Round of 16 contest taking place in Houston was so important for fans of both clubs.
“Houston is the most passionate city about these teams outside of Monterrey. An official match means a lot for us. The Leagues Cup knew that because they brought it here,” said Oziel Madrigal, a die-hard Rayados fan who has lived in Houston his whole life and supports Monterrey because of family ties. “They didn’t put it in Dallas or Austin, but in Houston because there are loads of Regios here. Lots of people who support Rayados, lots of people who support Tigres.”
That was evident, with a sell-out crowd of more than 20,000 people packing into Shell Energy Stadium. Supporters’ groups from each team stood at opposite ends, waving flags and cheering their teams on in a tight match that ended with Rayados winning 1-0 thanks to a late penalty from summer signing Sergio Canales.
More than 20 percent of Houston’s population is Mexican or has roots in Mexico, according to Mexican government statistics, and political and economic collaboration between Monterrey and Houston is on the rise. In March 2022, Houston mayor Sylvester Turner visited Monterrey for the first international trade mission since the pandemic. He hosted Nuevo León governor Samuel Garcia a month later. The political leaders signed a Memorandum of Understanding working to strengthen existing bonds between Houston and Monterrey.
Now the region’s soccer teams are trying to do the same. Tigres hosted a number of pre-game events Tuesday, taking the team’s recent Liga MX championship trophy to the local bar where Tigres’ chapter of supporters’ group Libres y Lokos meet to watch games. Former player Hugo Ayala signed autographs with fans at the stadium as the tiger mascot stopped to interact and take photos with fans.
Carlos Valenzuela, Tigres' Vice President of Operations and Marketing, highlighted “Brand and Community” as one of the club’s six strategic pillars, with the goal of being a top three preferred Mexican club in both Mexico and United States as part of the motivation behind the efforts.
“With that pillar, we try to play four to six games a year in the States. The Texas market is obviously one of our most important markets,” Valenzuela said. “We also try to do social impact activities with friends in Texas like the Houston Texans. We work with the Houston Dash and Houston Dynamo. We try to bring a little bit of the things that make us proud in Monterrey to Texas so the community feels proud of being Mexican and being Tigres fans.”
Debany Salinas has lived in Houston for 24 years but was born in San Nicolás de los Garza, the city in the Monterrey area where Tigres’ historic stadium El Volcán sits. She and her family are noticing the club’s efforts to connect more with the fan base in Houston and other parts of the United States.
“It’s super cool. We’ve always come to support them and we do the same when we go to Monterrey,” she said. “The fan base just keeps growing, and it feels nice they’re paying attention to us.”
Both clubs launched social media accounts in English this summer, trying to better connect with younger fans who may speak Spanish but prefer to consume social media posts in English. And before the Leagues Cup knockout game came together, the teams announced a friendly match in Houston later this year, then believed to be the first Clásico Regio to take place in the U.S. in more than a decade.
“For us, Houston is a super important city. It’s the second-biggest city when it comes to fans of our club,” Pedro Esquivel, Executive Vice President of Monterrey said. “We’re trying to make our brand available to our fans, to come to Houston a lot more but we also are doing events with legends and launched an English campaign to reach the second and third generations. We’ll be doing things around merchandising and do more things with our fans, including taking some of them to Monterrey.”
It’s an initiative that will be exciting to the passionate fans of La Adicción and other Rayados supporters in Houston, but Tuesday it seemed unnecessary to travel to Monterrey. With the teams on the field competing for a spot in the quarterfinals, the fans singing as loud as possible, it felt like all the action, the biggest party for a Clásico Regio imaginable was already in Texas.
