Mexico

At 16 years of age, Carlos Vela walked onto a soccer pitch in Peru with all the weight of Mexico on his shoulders. The Mexican National Team had finally made it the final of the U-17 World Cup. Not once in Mexico’s history had a Mexican national team made it to the finals of a world tournament. No pressure. No pressure at all for Carlitos, who would go on to lead the young Mexican national team to glory against Brazil, scoring their first of the match and leading Mexico to a 3-0 scoreline against the tournament favorites.

F.C. Porto continues to shine in the Primeira Division, with El Tri players leading the way. The Portuguese giant has a strong core of Mexican players playing at the club and one of their new additions left a mark for the club in his first match. Jesus “Tecatito” Corona inspired The Dragoes to a win against Arouca at Estadio Municipal Saturday.

Javier Hernandez has made quite the impression at Bayer Leverkusen.

The Donald is now embroiled in the USMNT-El Tri rivalry. TV Azteca made a (thoroughly awesome) commercial that spliced some of Donald Trump's more cringeworthy moments with Mexican soccer players, and particularly Mexican soccer players who have played in the U.S., doing cool stuff.

The Star-Spangled Banner playing in the background was a nice touch. 

Even though we are fans of the USA, we are forced to admit that the commercial was pretty cool. Hopefully the U.S. can produce a commercial to match it, but we have our doubts.

Mexico tied Argentina Tuesday, 2-2, in a lively match that got more interesting as it went. Mexico took a 2-0 lead into the 85th minute via a Chicharito Hernandez penalty kick and a nice shot from Hector Herrera, but Sergio Aguero and Lionel Messi proved too much for Mexico to contain near the end. Here are our takeaways.

It was mostly positive for Mexico, given they drew with one of the best teams in the world.

They played 85 minutes of solid soccer.

It's hard to say if Bayer Leverkusen knew they were gong to pick up a heck of a lot more fans after bringing in Mexican striker Javier "Chicharito" Hernandez from Manchester United, but that is what happened.

We can tell that's what happened because when the transfer was announced earlier this week Bayer Leverkusen's website actually crashed.

It seems to us that no team really understands how huge soccer is in Mexico until they bring aboard a Mexican player. Chicharito's transfer announcement garnered more than 50,000 likes on Facebook and more than 15,000 retweets. 

Club de Cuervos, a Mexican soap opera, focuses itself on a family that now must decide who will take charge of the father’s soccer club. The comedy-drama can be found on Netflix and could be a good option for soccer fans who can’t handle the mid-week slump of having no professional soccer games to watch. The comedy may not involve the kind of drama we see on the pitch every weekend, but it does include hilarious scenes that parody soccer and family.

The warm and salty air of Porto, Portugal welcomes travelers to one of the country's oldest cities. The city, located right next to the North Atlantic Ocean, is home to the Primeira club F.C. Porto. The Dragoes, as they are known, are one of Portugals most well-known soccer clubs. The club’s players and fans are always fighting tooth and nail for the Primeira championship against S.C. Benfica, one of their bitter rivals and the other character in the O’Classico derby.

Cubo Torres wreaked holy havoc upon the MLS when he played for Chivas USA in 2014. He scored 22 goals in 44 games before the club folded and the Houston Dynamo acquired him that same year. 

Torres started his first game in a Dynamo shirt on August 29, and got 66 minutes of game time and an assist. He's only appeared in seven games for the Dynamo thus far, and has yet to score.

So what happened? Erick "Cubo" Torres is only 22-years-old, but his career has already seen enough ups and downs to call him a veteran.

He was going through yet more hardship at Manchester United after struggling last season at Real Madrid. It seemed like de ja vu, only worse, because of the simple fact that he was back to square one, regressing. At Real Madrid he at least took one step forward by virtue of leaving Manchester United for a bigger club, which made his struggles understandable and eventual success more respectable. Struggling back at United made it seem like he had lost everything he had gained at the end of his stint at Madrid.