Potro Gutiérrez's Two Colours: América's Applause, Cruz Azul's Anger

On a stage of one hundred and ten years, the former players lined up. Some had grey hair, some carried age in their shoulders, some an old ache in the knee. At Club América's birthday ceremony a row of faces emerged from the tunnel, many of whose bond with this stadium is older than blood. Among them was Raúl 'Potro' Gutiérrez. In the 1990s he ran this midfield in the same blue-and-cream shirt; his footprints still sit in the dust of old videotape. That evening he received applause, and for a few seconds the camera flash lit his face.

A few hours later, on another edge of Mexico, a different picture surfaced on phone screens. A section of Cruz Azul supporters wrote: the man who coaches our women's team — how does he smile on our eternal rival's stage? One round of applause, a few posts, and a man was caught between two colours.

Liga MX Femenil is Mexico's top professional women's football league. Cruz Azul Femenil is a mid-table side in it — that much can only be assumed, because beyond a 3-3 record in six matches there is no hard information here: no league table, no measure of opponent strength, no goal-difference clue. In the fifth jornada of the 2026 Apertura, that is, mid-tournament, Gutiérrez took charge of the team's technical direction. He arrived without a pre-season, inheriting a squad built by his predecessor, with no time to install his own plan. Then came six matches: three wins, three defeats, 1.5 points per game.

Those numbers are the only hard truth in this story. The rest is feeling, and feelings do not keep tables.

The rivalry between América and Cruz Azul is known in Mexican football as the Clásico Joven, one of the most emotionally charged derbies in the country. It is not bound by geography; it is a culture, an inheritance, a contest of self-identity, in which blue-and-cream and sky-blue become symbols of two different lives. In that contest women are not spectators — they play, they sweat, they lose, they win. Yet in this episode they were pushed to the edge again.

I have spent years in Chattogram watching Liga MX matches on weak internet streams — sometimes at dawn, sometimes in a silent room, watching the ball crawl forward on a slow screen. From that habit I learned to see Mexico's derbies not as games but as family quarrels, where every new dispute is another chapter in an old, unspoken ledger. I do not cover matches; I listen for the heartbeat underneath the scoreline.

Gutiérrez is the memory of two places at once. In América's museum of memory he is an exhibit that still sweats and sings; on Cruz Azul's touchline he is present, daily, responsible. Football culture is a museum where the exhibits never fully turn to dust, because the memory of sweat and song still lives inside them. The supporter who is angry today cannot fit two different times into one frame — the Potro of the 1990s on one side, the coach of 2026 on the other. There is no conflict between these two Potros; the conflict was made in the viewer's eye, in the camera flash, in the light of a screen.

And this is where the numbers return. Six matches. Three wins. Three defeats. 1.5 points per game. This record can say two opposite things at once: a coach is steadying a team, or a coach is unravelling one. Six matches are not enough material for a verdict; six matches are the first word of a sentence, not the whole sentence. Whoever wants to reach a conclusion from that number cannot see the shadow of the man standing behind it. Statistics in football are never neutral; every number carries a name, a body, a tired breath. Three defeats mean three sleepless nights. Three wins mean three times a dressing room screaming itself hoarse. 1.5 points per game means one man standing under questions week after week, quietly counting.

Taking charge mid-tournament is not taking charge; it is carrying an inheritance. A coach who arrives in the fifth jornada begins fighting opponents before he has installed his own footballing philosophy. The squad is not his, the rhythm of his training is not his, even his failures are not entirely his. In that situation six matches cannot measure his technical ability, because measuring technical ability requires formations, pressing height, possession, positional discipline — of which this discussion contains not a single point. What is absent cannot be judged; what is absent can only be imagined. And that imagination has become a weapon in supporters' hands.

There is another layer here that is easy to miss. When the coach of a women's team is dragged into an old men's-club rivalry, women's football again steps away from its own game and becomes the backdrop of someone else's story. In this Cruz Azul Femenil controversy there is not a single women's footballer, yet the controversy is about the future of their team. The team that sweats on the pitch appears in the discussion only as a connecting word — 'the women's side' — while the real fight runs between two men's institutions. Women's football is growing fast in Mexico, making its own stars, building its own audience; yet every time the old rivalry stirs, the women's stage can be rented out again, turned again into the set of someone else's play.

Now back to the most-used phrase: 'a section of the fans.' On social media, what does a section mean? A section means a screen, a few accounts, a few hundred reposts, and an algorithm that loves anger. Anger voiced online is no measure of public opinion; it is only a sound that seems many times louder in echo. When an editor labels a ceremony a 'controversy', that 'section' suddenly grows large; the silence of those who said nothing disappears; the voices of those who found the ceremony normal go unwritten. Media does not create public opinion, but it very often changes its shape.

The calmest fact has been buried the deepest. At that ceremony Gutiérrez was not alone. Several former players received the same honour, on the same stage, to the same applause, before the same cameras. The club did not single out his name; the club simply remembered its own history, and in that history he was one of many names. A supporter's anger is born the moment he does not know this plain fact, or does not want to. The whole affair is an ordinary act of courtesy, inflated by a bundle of grievances into the image of a rivalry.

Now, in the language of the transfer window, one question presses: what is this anger worth? The only financial shadow here is the possible cost of terminating the coach's contract. No figure is written anywhere, no contract length, no settlement amount. Yet the principle is clear: when the anger is this light and the results this ordinary, a board usually takes no risk. Breaking a contract means money, instability, and the time to find a new coach. Sacking a coach overnight is easy; answering who replaces him requires opening the ledger.

This is where the blind spot of collective memory hides. Supporters think they are talking about betrayal; in fact they are dressing an ordinary ceremony in the clothes of a historic insult. Their anger likely does not spring from this ceremony, but from dissatisfaction already accumulated over six matches, which needed a face. Potro's América connection supplied that face. An old frustration found an address, and the address is comfortable, because there one need not think about the team's own weaknesses. If someone truly wants Cruz Azul Femenil's good, he should ask: what will the team learn in the next six matches, and who will teach it?

I keep returning to the boy who ran through history, because he never stopped running. Potro Gutiérrez was that boy in the 1990s; he is also the coach of Apertura 2026. These two times can live together, if we do not turn memory into a weapon. Memory in football is a free place, where a man can live in more than one colour, because he is a person, not a shirt.

The next three or four matches will decide what becomes of this anger. If the team keeps winning, the phrase will slowly fade, like pitch lines washed out by rain. If the defeats continue, two angers will gather into a wall. Then the question will not be about Potro's past, but about us: can we make room inside one stadium for people of two colours, or have we learned to read every applause as betrayal? The boy who ran through history is still running, and we are still becoming.