Club America and Pachuca, two of Mexico’s biggest soccer clubs, have pulled out of a friendly match that was due to be played on July 7th in Glendale’s University of Arizona Stadium. Club America stated that its reason for pulling out was the signing of the racist law, S.B. 1070:
“Club America would like to inform you that due to the latest developments regarding the new immigration bill… our team will not participate in any friendly match during the preseason 2010 within the state of Arizona.”
Mexican clubs are extremely popular in Arizona. In recent years many Mexican league clubs and the Mexican men’s national team have played there. Arizona was one of the host cities for the 2005 Interliga, a very important tournament in Mexican soccer that determines one of Mexico’s representatives in the prestigious Copa Libertadores, South/Central America’s premier international club tournament.
In 2009, Glendale, Arizona was one of the host cities for the 2009 Gold Cup, North/Central America’s bi-annual men’s national team event. The Mexican men’s national team has also played numerous times in Arizona against the United States’ National men’s team in Glendale in 2007 in front of almost 65,000 people.
Glendale is listed as one of the bidding host cities for the United States’ 2018/2022 FIFA World Cup bid. Hosting matches at a World Cup is an extremely lucrative deal which could easily earn the city/state millions of dollars. If you look at the most recent World Cup in Germany in 2006:
The four-week tournament earned Germany’s tourism industry an extra 300 million Euros ($399 million) in revenue, added 2 billion Euros to retail sales and yielded 50,000 new jobs, according to the final report on sports’ biggest event.
When the head of the Mexican and USA soccer federations spoke at a press conference last week, both were asked about the Arizona law and gave interesting responses. When asked if the new law would mean that Glendale would be removed as one of the bidding host cities for the World Cup, Sunil Gulati said no, but he continued:
“It’s obviously a very difficult issue for the governor and legislators,” he continued. “I think the balance that everyone involved in such issues tries to find between the law and human rights, civil rights and humanity is probably off the mark here in this particular piece of legislation and hopefully they’ll find a very different balance quickly.”
The head of the Mexican Soccer Association, Justino Campean, stated:
“We’ve played there [in the past] and we’ve filled the stadium,” Compean said.
“And in February [2011] we begin our tour and we will wait to see what happens. We could start in Arizona or we can eliminate it [as a tour stop]. Our support for our fellow Mexicans in Arizona is total and unconditional.”
The groups behind the Arizona law, affiliates of the anti-immigrant John Tanton Network, often argue that immigrants take away jobs from American workers and that they have a detrimental effect on the economy. Little did they know that the bill they drafted is actually hurting the economy of Arizona and its potential to create new jobs.