League Spotlight: Mexico / Primera Division

And so we head to the far-off sultry climes of Mexico for our latest League Spotlight. We're sure for many of you the mere mention of the word 'Mexico' will conjure up numerous Technicolor-rich images of Pele and Jairzinho scoring for Brazil in 1970 (or, if you're Scottish, the image of Gerd Muller hooking the ball over Peter Bonetti's head), and so for that reason alone it's right to be focusing on this fabulous football-mad nation.

'Mad' is actually not far short of the way football is run in Mexico, as indeed can be said of many Latin American countries. For a start, each season of their top-flight league, the Primera Division, is split into two parts - the 'Apertura' ('opening') from August to December and the 'Clausura' ('closing') from January to May. We saw evidence of this system in our Uruguayan League Spotlight and of course to us Europeans it seems unnecessarily complicated, but there we are.

To add another interesting twist, the eighteen competing teams don't play in one league but are instead split into three groups of six. The best eight at the end of the Apertura or Clausura then play off in the Liguilla - effectively a series of knockout rounds to determine who wins outright.

When it comes to relegation from the Primera Division, things get really quirky. At the end of the Clausura, the team with the lowest points-per-game average from the previous three seasons gets the boot, replaced by the best team overall from the Primera Division 'A'. Sheesh, even the names of the divisions are confusing…

No matter. The 2008 Apertura recently came to an end with Toluca being crowned champions for the first time in three years. They overcame Cruz Azul 7-6 on penalties in the Liguilla Final following a 2-2 draw after extra time. It was a remarkable turnaround of fortunes for the side located to the west of Mexico City as the start of their campaign was anything but successful.

New coach Jose Manuel De La Torre struggled to get Toluca playing consistently well at first and it was only a run of five wins at the end of the campaign that saw them surge into a play-off place. Having done so, they prospered from a relatively easy quarter-final draw against UAG before battling out a tough semi-final victory over 2008 Clausura champions Santos Laguna.

Toluca could easily credit their Apertura win to two players in particular - Hector Mancilla, their Chilean striker and top scorer in the campaign with eleven goals, and goalkeeper Hernan Cristante who set a new record by keeping a clean sheet for 762 consecutive minutes. Quite an achievement for the man wearing the 125 shirt.

With the 2009 Clausura now underway, many are waiting to see if it'll be 'third time lucky' for Cruz Azul after finishing as runners-up in the last two competitions. Though historically they're one of the most successful Mexican clubs ever, they haven't won a league title since 1997 so success is considered somewhat overdue for this team from the southwest of the capital.

Mexico City is where you'll find three of the eighteen current top flight clubs, América and Pumas de la UNAM being the other two we're yet to mention. América won the Clausura in 2005 and is the richest club in the country on account of its owner having the biggest Spanish-speaking telecommunications company Televisa listed in his business portfolio.

Currently coached by former Argentine striker and Oxford United manager Ramon Diaz (we're not making this up, you know), América's most recent brush with glory came in the Final of the 2007 Clausura where they lost out to Pachuca in the Final.

UNAM, ironically, finished runners-up in the 2007 Apertura but the peak of their recent achievements was undoubtedly in 2004 when they won both league tournaments and numerous other competitions to boot. Their manager then was the star of the 1986 World Cup, Hugo Sanchez, who proved so successful that he went on to manage the national team just prior to Sven Goran Eriksson's arrival.

It's been five years since that last league win for UNAM, but that's untypical for Mexico's Primera Division. These days it's rare for any team to maintain a stranglehold over the competition as the league title changes hands time and time again.

Winning the Clausura in 2006 and 2007 was therefore something that Pachuca fans would have delighted in and it provided the basis for further success in the CONCACAF Champions League which they won in 2007 and 2008. Add to that a win in the inaugural SuperLiga in 2007 and you have a team that's as worthy of a top billing in Mexico as any other.

Pachuca currently have the best record in the 2009 Clausura after three games, and you wouldn't bet against them picking up another title when the current season ends in the summer. Just behind them in the overall rankings at the moment and looking for a return to better times is Guadalajara. Winners of a record eleven championships, the club from the north-west of Mexico that consists only of Mexican-born players have found success hard to come by recently, save for an Apertura title in 2006.

Their difficulty over the last few seasons has been to reach the Liguilla Final and have come unstuck regularly in the play-offs leading up to it. In the 2008 Apertura, they didn't even make the play-offs, but this may well turn out to be a blip as their current form suggests another title challenge could be on the cards.

Elsewhere in Mexico you'll find various other clubs who rise and fall on the tide of success. Monterrey, once managed by Daniel Passarella, are arguably at the top of that list. Their last piece of silverware came from a Clausura win in 2003 but in the last few competitions they've been among the lower placed teams and run the risk of incurring a possible drop into Primera 'A' at some point soon.

Atlante, on the other hand, were a team struggling to even get into the Primera Division a decade ago, but a series of behind the scenes changes led the club back to the big time culminating in a 2007 Apertura win. Their immediate future looks assured as a team challenging for trophies and it's this ability to survive, adapt and ultimately succeed that so many clubs in Mexico are capable of.

Ironically the national team must also now do the same. Under Sven Goran Eriksson's tutelage, Mexico have won just four games out of nine and only just scraped through into the final qualifying round for the 2010 World Cup. Whether Mexico can make it to South Africa remains to be seen, but the exciting and varied club football that goes on week in, week out will never be in doubt. The Primera Division in the land of the Aztecs is a fascinating one to behold and if there was any justice in the world would have a much higher profile here in Europe than it's had up until now.

League Spotlight: Uruguay / Primera Division

Those of you who that have been following our regular feature 'League of the Week' will have by now spotted two things: (1) editions of 'League of the Week' have been anything but regular of late, and (2) this feature you're reading now seems to be more or less the same thing but with a different name.

There's a reason for that. We've decided to rename 'League of the Week' to 'League Spotlight' as, frankly, we couldn't keep up with the pace of researching and writing a sizeable feature like this along with all our other stuff on a weekly basis. We therefore thought we'd take a more flexible approach by bringing you the same feature whenever we could, but without any specific guarantees as to its regularity.

And with that weak excuse out of the way, let's crack on with today's League Spotlight and further to a request some time ago from Chris C Paul at Football Overdose we're on the road to Uruguay and their Primera Division...

Yes, Uruguay - twice world champions but these days an also-ran in the global game. While the national team labours on in the vague hope of capturing a qualifying berth for the 2010 World Cup, its top domestic league remains a melting pot for some of the most well-known clubs on the planet.

Back in days of yore when the champion clubs from Europe and South America played for the FIFA Intercontinental Cup, it wasn't unusual to find a Uruguayan club in the Final. Penarol appeared in three of the first seven from 1960 onwards, and two of those they won against Real Madrid and Benfica.

Nacional were the next to take part, beating Panathinaikos in 1971 and Nottingham Forest in 1980 before Penarol returned to see off Aston Villa in 1982. Both teams would enjoy one more appearance in the Final - Penarol losing 2-1 after extra time to Porto in 1987 and Nacional beating PSV Eindhoven on penalties the year after, but since then there's been nothing. Uruguayan club football, it seems, has been left behind by the rising fortunes of other countries in South America.

But is the Uruguayan First Division just a perennial two-horse race and do Penarol and Nacional still have the game by the throat these days? Not any more, so it seems, but change has only recently started to happen.

Despite Nacional or Penarol winning all but one of the league titles between 1992 and 2005, some new names are now starting to emerge. The current champions are Defensor Sporting, renowned for their ultra-defensive approach and a hot bed for talent that often finds greater exposure abroad.

Last season, they won the Torneo Apertura and went onto beat the Penarol 2-1 on aggregate in the two-legged Final.

Now at this point we should explain that the Uruguayan First Division is played out in two halves (as in many other Latin American countries). The first half of the season is called the 'Opening Tournament' (Torneo Apertura) while the teams play each other again in the second half, known as the 'Closing Tournament' (Torneo Clausura). The winners of each tournament play each other in a Final at the end of the season to decide the overall champions.

All of which is frightfully messy and not a little unnecessary, but never mind. Defensor are currently in sixth place in the Apertura, three points behind second-placed Danubio who are the only other team to break the Nacional/Penarol cycle by winning the championship in 2006/07.

Danubio can claim to have had many well known players pass through its doors over the years. One-time Middlesbrough curio Hamilton Ricard played there in their championship-winning season while the likes of Alvaro Recoba and Ruben Sosa - both legends of the national team - also donned the diagonal sash of La Franja.

They also have the current leading scorer in the Primera Division, Sergio Leal, who recently arrived from Gimnasia in Argentina and has so far scored six goals in this season's Apertura. But what of the two giants and biggest rivals in the Uruguayan top flight, Penarol and Nacional? What's to know about them?

Well Penarol, famous for their yellow and black striped shirts, are one of the oldest clubs in the world created around the workforce of the local British-owned railway company back in the late-1900's. They've been Uruguayan champions more times than any other club (36) and have been runners-up for the last two seasons.

They're obviously still a team to be reckoned with and having such strong support means they're justified in making regular use of the nearby Estadio Centenario - the monolithic stadium that staged the first World Cup Final in 1930. Not that they can call the Centenario their own, mind you - they have to share it with their fiercest rivals, Nacional.

Winners of five out of the last ten championships, Nacional are based in Montevideo... but then again so are 13 of the other 15 teams in the Primera Division. Historically speaking, it's played a big part in Uruguayan football and provided most of the players for the national teams that won the 1928 Olympic soccer tournament and the World Cup of 1930 (above left). Also, as eluded to earlier, they're the only team to win the Intercontinental Cup (World Club Cup) three times.

And to leave you in no doubt as to their credentials, Nacional are also currently top of the league, one point ahead of Danubio. So who else do we need to know about before we draw a line under this little old summary?

Well there's Liverpool... no, not that Liverpool - Liverpool FC Montevideo, so named (supposedly) because some of the club's founder members had heard of the English port and like the sound of it. They've never won the league but are currently fourth in the Apertura and managed a third place finish back in 1995. Further success is long overdue, one feels...

Then there's River Plate, third place last season and eighth at the moment, Cerro, a relatively unknown quantity but currently third in the table, and Bella Vista who won the league title once in 1990 and were third in 1998.

To be honest, there are many other teams that make up the top division in Uruguayan football, but the important ones are those listed above. Some might say even they are doomed to achieve only limited success for the simple reason that any player showing a feint glimmer of quality tends to get snapped pretty quickly by another club in another country.

A case in point can be gleaned from the team that started in Uruguay's last World Cup qualifier against Bolivia a month ago. Of the eleven players that kicked off, only two - Carlos Bueno of Penarol and Hugo Arismendi of Nacional - play their club football in the Primera Division.

And that's why there's a kind of forlorn air about Uruguayan league football. As much as the fans get behind their teams and cheer them on to their next victory or their next trophy, they must surely be aware that in the overall scheme of things, the Primera Division barely shows up on the world football radar.

Whether their star will rise again, though, one can't be sure, but at least Uruguayan club football has a proud history that many countries would yearn for. That alone is something to be rather proud of.