If Liga MX wants to become a global league, it will need to speak globally

On a recent episode of The Mexican Soccer Show podcast, ESPNFC.com’s Tom Marshall brought up an interesting point about Liga MX really being at a crossroads and needing to decide if it wanted to be a Mexican league (one whose main function is the development of young Mexican players and coaches) or a global league (one that imports the best players from around the world to showcase their talents). Marshall’s discussion focused on the importing of foreign players, but it also touches on how Mexican clubs see themselves.

Clubs - and Liga MX itself - either see themselves as belonging to a Mexican league or belonging to a more global league. This is most evident by the balance of foreign and Mexican players in the league, but it also manifests itself in how the clubs and the league present themselves to fans around the world.

It’s no secret that Liga MX and its clubs can do better to market itself outside of Mexico. To their credit, Tijuana and Santos Laguna have English-language social media and routinely produce digital content for their English-language audiences, and they do it well. Club América is also rumored to be preparing to start creating English-language content soon. While some teams have occasionally tweeted out things in languages other than Spanish (Pachuca for instance has sent tweets in Japanese thanks to the arrival of Keisuke Honda), it would be a small investment for a team to make to bring someone on board to do English-language content.

Photo by Eduardo Teran/Jam Media/LatinContent/Getty Images

Atlas, who has Ghanaian midfielder Clifford Aboagye and English midfielder Ravel Morrison does nothing in English. Pachuca has no content in either Japanese or English despite having a United States National Team player in Omar Gonzalez and one of the most recognizable Japanese players ever in the aforementioned Honda. Tigres’ website has options for French and English in addition to Spanish, but there’s no content in anything but Spanish. All the French and English options offer is the different tabs in those languages, however clicking on those simply displays the Spanish-language information.

León, who has (sometimes) United States goalkeeper William Yarbrough as well as Liga MX newcomer named Landon Donovan, does not have a functioning webpage in English or Spanish. Puebla has Canadian Lucas Cavallini but a broken website as well.

Photo credit should read YURI CORTEZ/AFP/Getty Images

To be fair, Liga MX teams do other things to reach fans in the United States. There are offseason friendlies in the US by all but a few teams. Most if not all teams have some sort of academy or fuerzas basicas in the United States, and a good number of teams have players from an English-speaking country.

Doing some sort of digital social outreach isn’t a huge investment for a team to make however, and would only increase the reach that these clubs have regardless of whether or not Liga MX wants to be a Mexican league or a global league.