In Mexico, football is played wherever space permits. The Reuters photographer Raquel Cunha spent three months taking photos of amateur matches across Mexico City and beyond.
Football in Improvised Spaces
Across Mexico, a co-host of the 2026 World Cup, football pitches are laid out wherever communities can find the space. On the edges of towns, on highway underpasses, and even in a volcano crater, spaces are cleared that allow people young and old to share in the dream of the beautiful game.
Monterrey: A Community Field
In an impoverished neighbourhood in Monterrey, northern Mexico, 14-year-old Humberto Guadalupe, nicknamed “Messi” by friends and family, spends his weekends on the community’s only football field, surrounded by abandoned cars and dirt roads. Humberto, with his grandfather Guadalupe Mendonza Guerrero and grandmother Maria del Carmen Gutierrez Rodriguez, dreams of becoming a professional player. “One way or another, it’s going to happen,” he says. “Even when we lose a match, we keep our heads up.”
At the Los Pinos football pitch in Cerro de la Campana, the Pandilleros team warms up before a championship semifinal against Bandoleros. Children from nearby communities play matches, and players compete in amateur leagues.
Field of the Gods: Volcano Crater Pitch
To the south, in a rural district on the outskirts of Mexico City, families arrive by car, motorcycle, bicycle and on foot to watch matches at the “Field of the Gods”, a football pitch inside the crater of the extinct Teoca volcano. Mist moves between pine trees and fruit orchards that frame the pitch in the former crater, nearly 700 metres above the sprawling Mexican capital. Built by the community more than 60 years ago, it is used by amateur local teams on Sundays.
San Isidro coach Jorge Baltazar talks to his players during a match against Bombay. Aitana Michelle Hernandez Blas and her mother watch Aitana’s father play. Children trade stickers of Brazilian player Vinícius Júnior from a World Cup album. Bombay player Diego Gutierrez Miranda plays with his 18-month-old baby before a match.
Xochimilco: Canals and Floating Gardens
In nearby Xochimilco, football players ride in traditional trajinera wooden boats along canals and cross chinampas, the ancient agricultural plots or floating gardens that helped sustain the Aztec capital centuries ago. They are heading to play on some of Mexico City’s last remaining natural grass pitches. Located inside a Unesco world heritage site, the pitches are an important social hub, but their creation can be damaging to the area’s ecology and the habitat of the endangered axolotl salamander, scientists say.
Referees gather before amateur league matches in the protected Xochimilco area. Emmanuel Dela Rosa, two, looks up at his father during a game. Emiliano Macedo, 21, wearing a kit inspired by former Mexican goalkeeper Jorge Campos Navarrete, rests during a break.
Diverse Settings Across Mexico
Though separated by landscape and distance, these matches share the same rhythm: communities building spaces around football in places shaped by hardship, geography and memory.
Teoca Volcano
A sports field known as the Field of the Gods, inside the crater of the inactive Teoca volcano.
Tlatelolco
In the painted soccer pitch in the Tlatelolco housing complex, the Sharkes community-led team hold matches to promote sport within the LGBTQA+ community in Mexico City.
Teotihuacan Pyramids
Hot air balloons drift over a football field near the ancient pyramids of Teotihuacan on the outskirts of Mexico City.
Alberto ‘Chivo’ Cordova University Stadium
This stadium doubles as a giant canvas: the “Aratmosfera” mural, by the renowned Mexican artist Leopoldo Flores Valdés, which is painted directly on to its arches and surrounding rock, blending art with architecture.
Avioneta Park
In one of the most densely populated areas on the outskirts of Mexico City, at Avioneta Park in Ecatepec, a small aircraft sits beside a barrio soccer pitch.
Luis Donaldo Colosio
With the near-perfect circle of the Xico volcano crater forming a backdrop, this soccer pitch sits on Mexico City’s edge, contrasting the clean lines of a sports field with the raw geometry of a volcanic crater.
Synthetic Soccer
In Monterrey, where space is tight, football often finds a home in residential complexes like this one, with compact “mini-pitches” increasingly common in dense Mexican cities.
University Olympic Stadium
Declared a Unesco world heritage site, the campus around this stadium is considered a masterpiece of 20th-century architecture and urban planning. Once the main venue for the 1968 Olympic Games, it remains one of Mexico City’s most historic sporting arenas.
Neza 86 Stadium
Built for the 1986 World Cup, the Neza 86 Stadium rises from the crowded outskirts of Mexico City, a fading arena where global football once met the city’s rapidly expanding edge.
Los Pinos, Monterrey
The Los Pinos football pitch in the Cerro de la Campana, Monterrey.
Parque La Mexicana Complex
This rooftop pitch on a Costco building in the Santa Fe business district of Mexico City is part of a layered urban landscape incorporating recreation and sustainability. Beside it, a green roof with 21 native plant and grass varieties introduces a dense patch of vegetation into the concrete surroundings.
