Antiamericanismo: The Roots of the Hatred Toward Club América, Told by an ESPN Commentator

Three in the morning in Hanoi, and a whistle with a rhythm

In Hanoi, I watch Liga MX at an hour when the only sounds left are the air conditioner and the commentator. That night Club América were the away side. Every time the ball reached a player in a yellow shirt, the stands erupted in another wave of whistling. What stopped me was not the volume. It was the rhythm. The whistling landed like a pre-cut tape: rising exactly as the player received the ball, cutting off exactly as the ball left his foot, then repeating on the next possession with almost identical delay.

Crowd emotion rarely has a structure that tidy. A crowd is noisy, out of phase, sometimes forgetting that it is angry at all. A whistle that precise made me think of something rehearsed.

A few days later I found an explanation where I did not expect one. A clip on ESPN, in which the veteran commentator José Ramón Fernández says he began speaking badly about Club América from the 2026/76 season, and that the purpose of it was to create a rivalry with Pumas. I watched it three times. On the third pass, I saw something VAR can never catch.

A word that is both a nickname and a verdict

In ordinary Spanish, “antiamericanismo” means anti-American sentiment. In Mexico, the word was lifted whole and attached to something else entirely: Club América, the most decorated club in Mexican football. The naming is sly because it turns a football attitude into something close to a political position, and it makes the idea far easier to remember than the neutral phrase “aversion to América”.

Club América are Las Águilas, based in Mexico City, playing at the Estadio Azteca, and according to Liga MX’s official records they hold the record for the most national league titles. The counterweight in this story is Pumas, Club Universidad Nacional, the team of the National Autonomous University of Mexico — an identity tied to a public university, far removed from América’s corporate image. Among observers of Mexican football, Club América has long been linked to a major broadcasting group, and that detail returns later.

Fernández also listed names from his childhood — Moacyr, Ney Blanco, Martell, Pepín González — anchoring his memory to a specific era of Mexican football. That is nostalgic colour, not analysis. But it shows he speaks about América from the position of a man who has lived inside this story longer than most of today’s audience.

One thing should be clear from the start: this is not an analysis of a match, a transfer or a tactical decision. It is about a different product of football — manufactured emotion. And because of that, every tool I normally use to read a game has to be repurposed.

The admission, and the weakest tier of evidence

José Ramón Fernández is not an outsider. He is a veteran commentator, a panellist on ESPN Mexico’s Futbol Picante, and a columnist for the newspaper Exélsior. Two platforms, one voice, and a career long enough to span several generations of Mexican players.

In the clip he claims the roles of “father”, “institution”, “rector” of antiamericanismo. He says the goal was to create a rivalry with Pumas.

Here I have to plant a methodological warning sign. A man’s account of his own conduct is the weakest tier of evidence for a historical causal claim. People misremember dates, inflate their role, and — most importantly — people have an interest in being credited as the author of a famous phenomenon. A commentator who claims to have created a hatred that has lasted half a century is also building a legacy for himself.

The source material cites no independent confirmation of the 2026/76 date. No minutes, no response from Pumas or América, no contemporaneous press quoted. One causal claim, one source, and that source is the beneficiary of the claim. My three verification passes all stopped at the same conclusion: this is a self-account, not yet history.

That does not make the story worthless. It changes the question. Instead of asking “did he create it”, the better question is “how much of it did he create”.

Where Fernández draws his own line — and why that is the most credible part

In the same account, Fernández does something many people skip past. He says he hates “América’s environment” and “the way television built it up”, not the club itself. About the club, he concedes they are a winning team and have played well.

That small detail is the firmest part of the whole story. It separates two kinds of grievance: grievance at losing on the pitch, and grievance at the sense that the playing field is bent. The second kind lasts far longer, because it does not depend on the score. A team that loses is forgiven. A team believed to hold an off-pitch advantage is not. **Hatred does