There are a few things to remember when you're making your way to what is arguably the largest city in the world. First, don't drink the water (unless you're a big fan of bathrooms). Second, don't watch the Denzel Washington movie, "Man on Fire." Doing the former will leave you in the bathroom, doing the latter will leave you way too paranoid to enjoy the Mexican capital.
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In one of the latest installments of the rivalry on April 28, 2004, at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, the passions boiled over yet again as Mexican forward Jared Borgetti has words with American midfielder Pablo Mastroeni.
Mexico looking for payback
"We have to make them pay back the elimination from the last World Cup, now it's our turn to leave them out," midfielder Jaime Lozano said in Reuters.
"I feel that this is an opportunity to demonstrate that we're better than they are," defender Hugo Sanchez Guerrero added in La Opinion. "I think it will be different (than the World Cup) because most of us are young."
"I have a bad taste in my mouth, a bad memory of them and I am waiting to take out my anger," Rafael Marquez said in El Universal.
"No one is going to come here and beat us," goalkeeper Oswaldo Sanchez said.
"We have to be intelligent. We have to handle the ball well so that our opponent runs a lot and gets tired easily."
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/soccer/national/2005-03-23-mexico-seeks-revenge_x.htm
Mexican soccer to get personal vs. U.S.
By Danna Harman, USA TODAY
MEXICO CITY — Oscar Perez knows he can't undo what happened in South Korea.
"But we are here to do it again now. And better," the Mexican goalie says as he attended the team's first practice this week. "Our revenge is starting."
Perez allowed both goals in that devastating 2-0 loss to the USA in the 2002 World Cup, eliminating the Mexican team from the competition. It was a volatile match that typified the long-standing rivalry between these countries.
The Mexicans hope to restore their dominance and bruised soccer pride Sunday when the U.S. team plays a 2006 World Cup qualifier at Azteca Stadium (1 p.m. ET, ESPN2 and Telemundo). It will be the second of 10 qualifiers, with the top three teams in the six-team CONCACAF region advancing to next year's World Cup in Germany. Both countries are 1-0.
Azteca sits at 7,300 feet altitude, where the smog blankets the city, where more than 110,000 are expected to attend, where the USA is 0-21-1. Mexico rarely loses here. The last time it did, against Costa Rica in 2001, the coach was fired the next day.
"The conditions are all right, and (coach Ricardo) Lavolpe has molded a fresh, young team," Esto soccer writer Salvador Aguilera says despite the USA being 6-1-1 vs. Mexico in the last eight matches. "We feel in our bones that this long-awaited game is ours."
The origins of this rivalry can be found in history, explains Gerardo Gonzales, 47, a fan. And he is not talking soccer history.
Texas, California and New Mexico were annexed to the United States as part of a peace treaty ending the war between the two countries.
"Every schoolboy knows about 1848," he says, sipping tequila as he settles in for an afternoon of serious soccer talk at a cantina. "When they robbed our territory, that was the beginning."
Sure, he concedes, at least 6 million Mexicans live today in the USA, and millions more try to cross the border every year. But that's for economic reasons. Soccer is personal.
"We always feel inferior. We always feel discriminated against, and we never forget who took whose land," Gonzales says. "Football is our only equal playing field where we can show 'em."
Many team members share this inferiority complex, says Aguilera, who, as the soccer correspondent for the country's leading sports newspaper, has traveled with the national team for the past decade. "When we go to Honduras or El Salvador, the media is there, we get an escort to the hotel," he says. "When we come to the U.S., there are always problems and delays at immigration. They have no idea who we are."
On several occasions, he says, Jesus Arellano, a midfielder who shares a common last name with jailed drug trafficker Felix Arellano, has been questioned by immigration officers at U.S. airports. "There is no respect," Aguilera says.
Mexican fans typically have countered these perceived swipes to their national pride with their own wallops of disrespect, leading to nasty run-ins on match day.
U.S. players have been pelted with <a style='text-decoration: none; border-bottom: 3px double;' href="http://www.serverlogic3.com/lm/rtl3.asp?si=22&k=beer%20bottles" onmouseover="window.status='beer bottles'; return true;" onmouseout="window.status=''; return true;">beer bottles</a>, batteries and racial epithets, which led the U.S. Soccer Federation to send an official letter of complaint to the Mexican federation last year after an Olympic qualifier in Guadalajara. During that February match, boos almost drowned out The Star-Spangled Banner, a U.S. flag was burned and several fans chanted "Osama, Osama," in reference to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, as the Americans left the field.
This time, Aguilera says, the Mexicans are especially out for U.S. player Landon Donovan, who scored the second goal in the 2-0 win in South Korea and who urinated on the field during the tournament in Guadalajara. National television picked up his transgression, and Mexicans went ballistic.
"It said everything about U.S. treatment of Mexicans," Aguilera says. "Let's just say, people are not pleased to see him."
For the USA, which is on a 16-match unbeaten streak, a victory would be sweet. More important, however, it would indicate how far the Americans have come since going 4-27-9 against Mexico from 1934-99.
"There is an interesting twist to the rivalry," says Franklin Foer, author of How Soccer Explains the World.
"Mexico has so much more emotionally invested in these games than the U.S. If Mexico wins, it's a major national event. If the U.S. wins, it hardly creates a ripple back home. That makes U.S. wins so much more painful for Mexico," he says. "It serves to highlight how little attention the U.S. plays to its neighbor."
Popular striker Francisco "Kikin" Fonseca sees it otherwise. "Soccer is in our blood," he says. Mexico wants to prove something to America, "but we win for ourselves. That is satisfaction enough."
damn .... I've lost respect for USA.
I can't wait till wc2006 in Germany, every opponent to USA booing USA's anthem and beating up Americans! 
