The Critic in the Front Row: América's 110 Years and the Blurred Line Between Newsroom and Boardroom

I watched the clip three times, pausing it at the seventeenth second. A hall in Coapa, warm lighting, commemorative trophies lined up neatly. Among the former players and the board, there sits a man whose entire career was built on saying “no” to América: José Ramón Fernández, a Mexican sports journalist whose voice is bound up with decades of criticizing the richest and most decorated club in Liga MX. He sits there, at the 110th-anniversary celebration of the very club he once called the emblem of everything he disliked about Mexican football. No one stopped him. No one needed to. What made me pause was not the presence of a journalist at a party. It was that his presence was told as a highlight, as if the club wanted the whole country to know that even its harshest critic had come to pay tribute. In English football, where I work, a writer who specializes in attacking a club and then accepts that club’s gala invitation would draw puzzled looks from colleagues. In Mexico, it became news. And that news, read carefully, is not about a man. It is about a structure of power. Club América was founded on October 12, 2026, in Mexico City. One hundred and ten years later, it stands among the four “grandes” of Liga MX, alongside Chivas Guadalajara, Cruz Azul, and Pumas UNAM. The Clásico Nacional between América and Chivas is the most-watched fixture in Mexican football — a battle not merely between two teams but between two ideas of identity: the club of the capital, of money and media power, against the club of Guadalajara, of local spirit. Across its history, names like Hugo Sánchez, Cuauhtémoc Blanco, and Guillermo Ochoa have lent this yellow-and-blue shirt a weight that reaches far beyond the pitch. But there is a detail the anniversary report does not state, and that anyone in the trade knows: América is owned by Televisa, one of the largest Spanish-language media conglomerates in the world. This is not a club sponsored by a broadcaster. This is a club owned by a broadcaster. That difference, seemingly small, is the entire story. When you report on a club, you stand on one side of a line. When the club owns the broadcaster you work for, the line disappears. No resolution forbids you from criticizing. No clause in a contract stops you. There is only a simpler and harder fact: the person who pays your salary and the person you are criticizing can sit in the same boardroom. In England, I have watched debates about whether a newspaper should let its owner interfere in sports coverage. In Mexico, that question is not asked, because the answer is already built into the structure. This model is no longer Mexico’s alone. In Spain, Real Madrid runs its own media channel; in England, more and more clubs produce their own content and sell it directly to fans. The line between the outlet that reports and the subject it reports on is thinning everywhere. América is merely an early example, not an exception. What makes this case distinctive is that in Mexico, no one needs to hide the relationship. It is public to the point of being normal, and it is precisely that normality that is worth talking about. I do not believe the easiest reading: that this is a story of reconciliation, that time has healed every crack, that an older journalist and an older club found each other at the end of the road. That reading sounds warm, and it is precisely because it is warm that it is suspect. Look at the mechanism. Power does not only repress. Mature power also knows how to absorb. A club criticized for decades has two choices: build a fence, or open the door. A fence creates an enemy. An open door creates a guest. An enemy is dangerous, because he stands outside and can say anything. A guest is safe, because he has stepped inside, sat down, taken a place in the photograph. From that moment on, every criticism he makes, however sharp, carries a different resonance: the voice of someone inside the house, not of an outsider throwing stones. In international relations, this is called soft power. The concept, popularized by the scholar Joseph Nye, holds that the most durable strength is not the power to coerce but the power to make others want what you want. A club does not need to silence its critic if it can make the critic voluntarily walk into its hall. That is a far subtler victory than prohibition, and far harder to resist. This is a lesson I once touched on when writing history. In the book on Francoism that I completed in 2026, I devoted many pages to a paradox: the regime did not destroy the Catholic Church, it pulled it into the apparatus. The Church was not smashed; the Church was invited to sit at the table. And once seated at the table, its voice of protest naturally became part of the order. América does the same with its critic. There is no ban. There is only a front-row seat, a round of applause, and a photograph. I think of the line I keep reminding myself of whenever I am criticized: “I mispronounced a name three times on live air, but that did not make me wrong about myself.” A journalist can mispronounce a player’s name three times and still be right in his thinking. A journalist can also be right about every detail and still be neutralized as a whole. That neutralization does not come from a mistake. It comes from a seat. In Mexico, the sports-media ecosystem is tightly bound to the large television conglomerates. This produces a kind of journalism that I, watching from Manchester, have to keep recalibrating how I read. A commentator can become famous for criticizing América on air. But whose air is it? If the wave of criticism survives, it is sometimes precisely because it draws viewers, and those viewers flow into the same revenue stream. This is the point fans find hard to see: on-air confrontation, to some degree, is also a product. It sells. It provokes. It holds the audience through the ad break. Based on my experience following matches, I have learned that in leagues where a club and a broadcaster share the same owner, the line between news and advertising is not broken by a single act. It blurs through thousands of small acts: a flattering camera angle, a gentle headline, a commentator invited on air at the right moment. There is no conspiracy here. There is only a system operating the way it does, and a system does not need a conspiracy to work efficiently. This is also why I am always careful with the notion of “access” in the trade. In England, a reporter may trade sharpness for an exclusive interview. In Mexico, that trade can happen at a deeper level, where the club and the newsroom are no longer two sides of a negotiation but two rooms of the same building. At that point, access is no longer a gift that is given. It is a default state. I remember an evening at the Etihad, when football froze for the pandemic and matches were played before empty stands. In that half, we counted manager Pep Guardiola shouting “Play faster” twenty-seven times. That night I wrote in my notebook a line I would later use often: “The Etihad was empty, and I suddenly heard my own applause most clearly.” When there is no crowd, you hear who is really speaking. In a packed anniversary hall, the opposite happens: the applause drowns out the question. Who is speaking, and for whom? My counterintuitive view is this: the moment José Ramón Fernández sat at América’s 110th-anniversary celebration did not mark the end of a confrontation. It marked the peak of one — in the sense that the club won. When a man who spent a lifetime saying “no” finally appears in the photograph of those saying “yes,” that photograph does not record a reconciliation. It records an absorption. There is a reverse reading, and I must be fair to it. Perhaps he came out of genuine respect. Perhaps one hundred and ten years is a milestone large enough to rise above small differences. Perhaps a man at the end of his career wanted to lay down his old weapons. I have no right to deny the personal motives of a human being. But I do have the right to read the structure behind the act, because it is the structure that affects millions of fans, not the mood of one man. And that structure says this: in a league where the biggest club owns a broadcaster, the referee and the player can wear the same shirt. Fans think they are watching a debate between the newsroom and the boardroom. But the newsroom and the boardroom can sit in the same building. At that point, the debate is not a battle. It is a performance. I once wrote about Sunderland and was fiercely opposed: “Sunderland were relegated, and I still hold the view: going down is a way of going up.” I hold that view because I believe in reading structure rather than surface. A relegated club may be rebuilding its foundations. A journalist walking into his rival’s party may be doing the opposite of what it appears: instead of being honored, he is being placed exactly where the rival wants him — the position of an old friend, no longer a watchdog. There is one detail about América’s identity I do not want to skip. This is the most hated club in Mexico. In every country, the most successful and wealthiest team tends to be the most hated, because it represents concentrated power. But being hated is also a form of dominance. You are only hated when you are big enough for people to notice. And when your harshest critic shows up at your party, that hostility is converted into something else: recognition. The enemy acknowledges you are so large that he had to come. Look at what was transmitted after the event. The report was about what took place, about the sports figures gathered, about history, titles, and rivalries. There was not a single tactical datum, not one financial figure, not one piece of transfer information. This is the signature of a brand-media product, not a football report. And that is entirely logical, because its goal is not information. Its goal is to consolidate standing. In the football industry, an anniversary milestone is a commercial activation window. Limited-edition shirts, commemorative events, special broadcast content — all designed to flow into the same revenue stream. This is why I always look at an anniversary through the eyes of a businessman before I look at it through the eyes of a fan. One hundred and ten years is not merely a number of memory. It is an asset. But there is a subtler point. When the club and the broadcaster share an owner, the anniversary report is itself part of that commercial product. “News” content and “advertising” content no longer need to be distinguished, because both serve the same balance sheet. This is something English football, with its relatively clearer separation between press and club, rarely reaches at this level. In England, a newspaper can lose access if it criticizes too sharply. In Mexico, in this case, the newspaper and the club can be one. I do not say this to judge Mexico. I say it to point out that the model we live in, in England or Vietnam or anywhere, is moving in that direction. Media conglomerates buy clubs. Clubs launch their own media channels. Streaming platforms sign deals with leagues. Step by step, the reporter and the reported move closer together. América is merely an early example, not an exception. What remains after I close this story is a question about the trade. If a journalist can sit at the party of the person he criticizes without losing credibility, then what is that credibility built on? I once believed that a writer’s credibility lies in where he stands relative to power. I still believe that. But I also recognize that in a system where power invites you in rather than pushes you out, that distance is far harder to keep than when people simply shut the door on you. And perhaps the larger lesson from a hall in Coapa is not reserved for football. Football has always been a drama of mistakes — I have only helped make it more worth watching. But sometimes that drama unfolds not on the pitch, but in the front row, where they invite you to sit so you forget that you once stood on the opposite side.