In 1986, when Mexico became the first country to ever host the FIFA World Cup a second time, actor and director Diego Luna was only 6 years old. The year before, his hometown of Mexico City had been ravaged by a massive earthquake. That the World Cup happened at all in a nation recovering from such destruction seemed miraculous to a young Luna.
“It felt as though it wouldn’t happen. It was impossible given the magnitude of the disaster,” Luna, now 46, recalls in Spanish during a recent video interview. “And then when it did happen, you could witness what a balm it was for the people of Mexico City to host the opening ceremony, to welcome so many people from around the globe, and to receive such an outpouring of affection.”
“Mexico even had a song that said, ‘For now, at least, we have the Friendship Trophy.’ Sadly, that was the only trophy we got. And the only trophy we have ever won in fútbol,” Luna adds with a smirk.
Now, in Gabriel Ripstein’s acidly humorous film “Mexico 86,” out on Netflix starting Friday, Luna plays a fictional man in a partially true story about the ins and outs of how the country defeated more powerful adversaries and surmounted the chaos of the time to host the event successfully.
Luna’s passion for soccer, he says, was born during that fateful World Cup at home, where Argentina earned its second title by the “hand” of Diego Maradona.
“My uncle took me to see a match. He had won two tickets in a raffle at his job,” Luna says. “Back then, the people who attended the World Cup were the same people who went to fútbol games regularly.”
Luna worries that the exorbitant ticket prices for the upcoming World Cup (hosted across Mexico, the U.S., and Canada) will prevent everyday fútbol fans from attending. “I don’t know who will be able to afford these tickets, but it’s obvious that the people who go to watch fútbol every weekend in Mexico are not invited to the World Cup anymore,” he says. “They will have to watch it on screens in public squares.”
The claim that this year’s World Cup (starting June 11) is being organized among three countries is nothing but a smokescreen, Luna believes.
“In reality, the United States is organizing it, while Mexico and Canada have each been allotted just 13 matches,” he explains. “Yet the United States — a country currently fighting with the rest of the world — is hosting over 70. It defies understanding how they can aspire to host a tournament that is fundamentally about justice, equity and the communion of diverse cultures.”
Politics and soccer have, unfortunately, often been intertwined. Luna’s character in the satirical “Mexico 86,” Martín de la Torre, is a lowly government worker who weasels his way into a position of influence to have the ear of more powerful men like Televisa’s Emilio Azcárraga (played by Daniel Giménez Cacho). In order to emerge victorious in his quest to bring the World Cup to Mexico, De la Torre debases himself and backstabs shamelessly.
“My character is fictional precisely because he seeks to encapsulate the actions of the many bureaucrats who served this vast structure known as the State, or the PRI [party],” Luna says. “And how, in their eagerness to please the State, to appease this machinery, they are willing to sacrifice everything, even their own morality and professional ethics. Those acts of betrayal ultimately chart the course of the system’s own downfall.”
Luna’s love of the sport also stems from his late father and his lifelong predilection for Liga MX’s Pumas squad. “My dad worked at UNAM, and the university and its team, Pumas, have a very close relationship,” he says. “The stadium is right there, very close to the cultural zone. It is a beautiful architectural project, and it is part of the campus.”
Passionately cheering for Pumas has also been part of his friendship with fellow actor Gael García Bernal since childhood. “I went with Gael to watch the final match from the 1990–91 season, where Pumas became champions,” he recalls. “There we were, the two of us, 11 and 12 years old, watching our team triumph and win the final against the hated América.”
Los Charolastras, their characters in Alfonso Cuarón’s “Y Tu Mamá También,” were also Pumas fans. In the 2008 film “Rudo y Cursi,” the actors played feuding brothers with dreams of playing soccer professionally.
“‘Rudo y Cursi’ brought us closer to the experience of being a Mexican player in a deeply endearing way,” he explains. “We had the chance to be close to many players to understand what their journey had been like.”
As a soccer enthusiast, Luna has played many positions — all of them rather poorly, he confesses. Nonetheless, he’s always cherished the joy of playing for the sake of playing.
“Fútbol has always been a part of my life, and I played it right up until recently,” Luna says. “I don’t play anymore because my knees and ankles just can’t handle it. My age doesn’t allow it anymore, but I still watch it plenty.”
What Luna finds most beautiful about the sport is the built-in hope that no matter how imposing your opponent is, if luck is on your side, winning is possible. And maybe that’s just wishful thinking, but it’s enough to inspire both professionals and amateurs.
“When you are on the field, it doesn’t matter how big your gut is, or the intensity of the hangover you’re nursing from the night before; when the ball comes your way, just for a split second you tell yourself, ‘I think this time I’m really going to strike it really good. I’m going to put it right in there and score.’ But then, reality sets in, and the ball ends up hitting you more than you hit the ball,” he says laughing.
That soccer thrives on the genius and physical prowess of human beings, which also means that the possibility of failure makes it profoundly dramatic, fascinates Luna.
“In ‘86, Hugo Sánchez missed a penalty,” Luna recalls. “He was the best striker in the world at the time. There was no man more intimately connected with scoring a goal than he was. And yet, in his own country, he missed a decisive penalty. That sense of drama caused by human error in fútbol is absolutely thrilling.”
Luna believes that while stories about what surrounds the sport are compelling, there are no good movies that focus on the action on the field. “What happens there is already a perfect spectacle,” he says. “It consists of 90 minutes, divided by a break at the 45-minute mark that allows for speculation. It has two acts, and the second is always better than the first because it’s definitive. There is no turning back. The ending is inevitable.”
There’s also an egalitarian quality to soccer that other sports lack. It can be played without equipment and with an improvised ball, so long as you have others to play with.
“I used to play even without a ball, using a bottle of Frutsi. We’d fill it with sand to give it a little bit of weight, and that served as our ball,” Luna says. “Or there are moments when you find yourself playing even without a ball, juggling an imaginary one just like Maradona used to do.”
Soccer, Luna believes, represents an affront to the individualistic mindset that plagues today’s world because, by nature, it must happen in community.
“At a minimum, two people are required; and the more players there are on each side, the more thrilling and the more fun it becomes,” he says. “As long as we champion the capacity to act collectively, to exist in community, I believe that fútbol will endure.”
That thought reminds Luna of one of the other loves in his life.
“If you think about it, fútbol resembles cinema,” he adds. “To play it you have to do it as a team, and cinema isn’t cinema unless it’s watched in community, unless it’s shared.”
The post ‘Mexico 86’ is Diego Luna’s love letter to ‘the beautiful game’ appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
