The Promotion Door and the Fight of the Forgotten in Liga MX

No one from the Liga MX owners' section attended the Mexican Senate forum on the afternoon of September 21. Standing before the television cameras, Senator Clemente Castañeda of Movimiento Ciudadano slowly read each name: Leones Negros, Zacatecas, Atlético Morelia, Atlético La Paz, Cancún. Five clubs stuck in the second division, five regions where thousands of children play football with no door to the top. People call me a writer on the grass verge. I only know how to record the breathing of the ball before it rolls. That day, the ball sat still on the senate table, and behind it was a question never seriously asked in Mexico: who has the right to decide who gets to play in the highest league? Liga MX has long suspended promotion and relegation, turning the top flight into a closed membership club. For clubs like Leones Negros or Cancún, no pitch-side miracle can earn a place in the national championship. Sporting merit has been replaced by an entry mechanism controlled by the big owners themselves. Clubs in Liga de Expansión such as Atlético La Paz or Cancún were built on local faith, but faith cannot pay players or fix a stadium roof. The confrontation became clearer when COFECE, Mexico's Federal Economic Competition Commission, published investigation file IO-001-2026 in the Official Gazette on September 14. The agency said it is examining possible relative monopolistic practices in the market for 'affiliation, organization, and access to professional football competitions.' No one has been found guilty; the investigation has just begun. But the fact that the regulator opened the file on its own initiative, without a private complaint, suggests it sees a structural problem rather than an isolated dispute. The real matter is not sporting. It is economic. A second-division club in Mexico lives on gate receipts, the sale of young players, and modest broadcast money. Without promotion, its largest revenue channel — selling players to the top flight — shrinks to almost nothing. Owners cannot justify spending on stadiums, academies, and wages when there is no escape route upward. Their asset value erodes season after season. In that context, the five names at the Senate were not five isolated voices. They form an organized bloc of those locked out of the feast. They are not asking for a playoff spot; they are demanding the right to compete the way football works everywhere: results on the pitch decide your place. These five clubs are not powerless. Atlético Morelia has won the Copa MX; Leones Negros has one of the most loyal fan bases in the country. They are simply locked outside a door they do not have the key to. From a microeconomic view, closing the top division creates a perfect foreclosure structure: the big clubs are both players and gatekeepers. They control broadcast rights, decide the format, and benefit from having no new rivals threatening their status. For COFECE, the markets of 'affiliation' and 'access' are the key: if a group of firms controls entry conditions to exclude potential competitors, that is an abuse of dominance. Without promotion, second-division matches become a kind of ghost football — they happen regularly but lead nowhere. From Lyon, where I live and work, Ligue 2 promotion nights are the most sacred of the season. Small owners here know they will never get rich from broadcast rights, but they always have a door to knock on. The Moscow room had no window, but every night I saw the World Cup through the gap of my pen. In Mexico, I learned to listen to the pitch with my heart, because reason has said too many boring things. And my heart tells me: when a league no longer has promotion, it is no longer a league; it is a walled garden. But there is a blind spot the outrage is hiding. This fight, in fact, is not about the pitch. The decisive phrase in the investigation file is 'relative monopolistic practices' — a concept from competition law, not football. It does not accuse a gang of dividing the market; it accuses a structure where a business controls the gate and uses that power to block rivals. If COFECE concludes there was a violation, the remedy may not stop at fines; it could be an order to restore competitive conditions — in plain words, reopen promotion and relegation. The irony is that the most passionate fans of Mexican football, those standing in the stands every weekend, are unknowingly defending the wall. Their pressure goes into matches, results, and titles — creating a perfect shield for the owners. The owners do not need to sit in the Senate; they have thousands of supporters as cover. So the crucial question is not who is right in the promotion debate. It is whether an antitrust agency — which knows nothing about goals or trophies — can do what an entire football culture would not dare: open the door for the forgotten to walk in, not because they are rich or well-connected, but because they won on the pitch. And conversely, whether a senator chasing political light might accidentally turn football into a new game of power. The roar echoes in my head. The stadium is empty, but memory is never empty. Mexican football stands at a crossroads that no tactic or star can decide. The fate of Leones Negros, of Zacatecas, of thousands of children playing football on dusty streets, now lies with competition lawyers and lawmakers. A touch of the ball is an unfinished poem. The ball rolls on, but the writer stays — waiting to see whether Mexico dares to reopen the door it slammed shut.