The World Cup gets underway on Thursday in Mexico City, making Mexico the first country in the world to host the quadrennial extravaganza three times. I watched the Netflix film “Mexico 86” over the weekend, the tale of Mexico’s fairy tale success in hosting the World Cup in 1986, only a year after a disastrous earthquake struck Mexico City. It is a powerful story of ambition, bravado and entrepreneurial hustle. The lead character, Martín de la Torre, is a fictional composite who talks his way into leadership of the Mexican Football Federation, recruits media titan Emilio Azcárraga to support the bid and finds a way to persuade FIFA to award the host country status, besting the better funded U.S.
The 1986 World Cup was scheduled to be held in Colombia but an outbreak of narco-terrorism in 1985 forced the nation’s president to withdraw, opening the field to other bidders. The Mexican and American delegations went to work on the 12 nations that are represented on the FIFA board. Through emotional appeals to Third World brotherhood, the Mexicans were confident of victory. Then the Americans began their hardball tactics, for example offering missiles to the Egyptians in return for their vote. De la Torre was unphased, phoning Azcárraga for massive cash infusions, then delivering briefcases filled with money to wavering delegates. The final vote was comical; de la Torre rearranges the seating cards so that the first voters were South American (Chile), giving momentum to the Mexican bid, which wins out over the U.S.
Then disaster struck on September 19, 1985, when an epic earthquake devastated Mexico City. The 8.0 earthquake killed as many as 35,000 people (Government estimate was 5,000), collapsed 400 buildings, damaged 3,500 buildings, with total property loss of $4 billion. FIFA decides that Mexico cannot possibly recover in time from the disaster, so it sends one of its top officials to Mexico City to deliver the bad news in person. De la Torre arranges a Potemkin village welcome, including a traffic free journey from the airport to the city center, where he shows the FIFA official how thousands of Mexicans (including my wife Claudia, then age 14) were rescuing victims from the wreckage and helping devastated neighborhoods to survive. Finally, they arrive to a stadium filled with 25,000 fans singing football songs and showing that Mexico was the right place for the tournament.
The Mexican team had been a chronic under-performer in the World Cup. But with the tournament on home ground, the team had a miraculous run, to the round of eight, including an epic scissor kick winning goal against Bulgaria by Manuel Negrete, voted the most beautiful goal in Mexican history. Mexico played the strong German team to a stand-off in the quarterfinals, then lost 4-1 on penalty kicks. De la Torre, attempting to keep the momentum from the tournament, decides to stack the junior teams competing in world competitions with older players. The scheme is discovered, FIFA bans Mexico from the next World Cup and de la Torre is disgraced and dismissed by the Mexican Federation.
The film is a stunning story of resilience and creativity, a true triumph of the underdog. De la Torre is a flawed character but his belief in his country and the possibility of outsmarting the hated Yankees is worth everything. I am going to the World Cup match Brazil-Morocco on Saturday in New Jersey…pictures to come!
Richard Edelman is CEO.
