Mexico City: Mexicans loudly celebrated the NFL’s long-awaited return to their country on Monday, wearing sombreros, donning skull masks and blaring a controversial chant as the Oakland Raiders defeated the Houston Texans 27-20.
Mexico City’s cathedral of football, the Azteca Stadium, was a sea of silver and black in support of the Raiders, officially the home team, but without major insults against US President-elect Donald Trump, who has made several controversial remarks about Mexicans in his campaign.
Raiders quarterback David Carr threw three touchdown passes and Oakland remained atop the AFC West division with a 8-2 record, while the Texans fell to 6-4 but stayed atop the AFC South.
Carr threw a touchdown pass to receiver Amari Cooper with less than five minutes remaining to break a 20-20 stalemate.
The game was a long-time coming in a nation where the NFL counts 25 million followers, the most outside the United States. The Raiders are the fifth-most popular team in Mexico, well ahead of the Texans.
The NFL last played in Mexico City in 2005 while playing annually for the past nine years across the Atlantic Ocean in London.
Raiders fans came dressed with skull masks and face paint, as many fans in Oakland do, although sombreros fitted with face masks put a special Mexico touch on the event.
“We missed this,” said Hector Cervantes, a 56-year-old technology security firm owner wearing a black chain around his Raiders jersey.
Armando Oceguera, a 28-year-old Texans fan draped in a Mexican flag, said he was “a bit angry” that the NFL has given preference to London.
“We have the most important fan base outside the United States. It bothers me a little,” he said.
While it took the NFL a decade to return, it gave Mexico a primetime slot with the first Monday night game ever played outside the United States.
Arturo Olive, the director of the NFL’s Mexico office, said the league sees Mexico as a good place to expand its international presence, with two more games tentatively planned in 2017 and 2018.
A good show on Monday “will allow us to build a strategy of games in our country with an annual frequency and maybe follow the path of the London office,” which began with one game per year and now has three, Olive said, adding that for now there are no plans for an NFL team based in Mexico.
The ultimate American game returned to Mexico two weeks after Republican billionaire Donald Trump, who has angered Mexicans by calling migrants from their country rapists and drug runners, won the US presidential election. He has vowed to build a wall along the US-Mexico border and make Mexico finance it.
But few had politics in mind on Monday, Raiders fans saving their boos for the Texans before a sell-out crowd of 76,473.
“I don’t care about politics,” said Gonzalo Gonzalez, who travelled from Los Angeles for the game and had the words “Raider Nation” tattooed on his arms as well as “Hecho en Mexico” (Made in Mexico).
“I just care about the Raiders,” said the 43-year-old electrician, whose family moved from Mexico to the United States when he was a baby, though he used an expletive against Trump under his silver and black sombrero.
When Mexican-American pop singer Becky G performed the US national anthem, the few whistles heard in the stadium were shut down by others loudly hushing “shhh.”
The crowd went wild when a giant US flag made of a series of panels turned to reveal the colours of Mexico and they sang their nation’s anthem in unison.
But during kickoffs, punts and field goals, the fans turned to a chant that some consider homophobic and is used by Mexican football fans against rival goalkeepers during goal kicks.
Fifa has fined Mexico’s football federation for the chant, which many in the country defend and deny that it targets gays.
But Samuel Hernandez, a 39-year-old Raiders fan who dressed as a pirate with an eyepatch, said he was disappointed that fans had “shouted vulgarities” as the NFL could frown upon it.
Alejandra Estrada, 29, who works in marketing for a soft drink firm, said she was worried that the chant could cause the NFL to think twice before returning to Mexico, even though she does not consider it offensive.
“It worries me that they could take the word literally,” Estrada said.
