“In the past few years, many Mexican clubs have taken an interest in American players. Several clubs have placed particular emphasis on youth players, scouting extensively in the United States for the next Jose Torres, Joe Corona, or Edgar Castillo. No club has put more resources into recruiting young Mexican-American players north of the border than Pachuca. In September, I sat down with Marco Garcés, head of scouting for Pachuca to discuss the phenomenon of Mexican-American players heading south in ever greater numbers (a larger article on this topic will appear in issue three). Garcés was in San Diego for a tryout, which brought players from throughout the area who hoped to get noticed by Pachuca.” XI Quarterly

“Those words came out of the mouth of some man—southern, reasonably-tall, and apparently the mayor of San Pedro Sula, based on some of the I’m-sort-of-a-regular way he tried to talk about the place—on our shuttle from the airport to the hotel. It doesn’t really matter that the driver’s name was Melvin—he got three letters right, at least—or that, after a back and forth, they decided that the coup happened no later than 2008. The coup happened in 2009, as Noah Davis, esteemed person-who-has-been-to-Honduras-once, told me from the back of the shuttle. And what matters here is just that the coup happened. It happened less than four years ago, and now I’m here, rolling through the streets in a van, navigated by a man not named Javier, who has no problem cutting through gas stations instead of waiting for a red light to turn.” Outside