Pachuca Tuzos History
Cornish miners leave a legacy in Mexico
The Cornish pasty is doing good business in the small Mexican silver-mining town of Real del Monte.
Not usually associated with Mexican cooking, Cornish pasties appear on the menu more often than tacos
and enchiladas in this picturesque town, strung across rolling green hills 14 kms from the regional
centre of Pachuca.
Part of the inheritance left behind by miners who came from the English county of Cornwall to the
region in the 19th century, the pasties -- almost identical to the originals apart from the addition
of chopped green chillies -- have made little headway in the rest of the country.
Besides their traditional meat and vegetable pie, the miners brought something else which spread
across the entire nation: football.
Real del Monte boasts Mexico's earliest soccer pitch and its first football club, Pachuca Athletic Club,
founded in 1901. After a long spell in the doldrums of the Mexican second division, Pachuca are today
enjoying the best spell in their history.
In the last 10 years, the team known as the Beavers (Tuzos), who had never previously won the domestic
championship since Mexican football turned professional in 1944, have won three league titles and built
one of the most impressive infrastructures in Latin America.
The club are proud owners of a state-of-the-art, 27,000-seater stadium and a so-called football
university, which offers courses in everything from soccer coaching to sports journalism.
HUMBLE BEGINNINGS
The ultra-modern site is a far cry from the English cemetery in Real del Monte, the only remaining
evidence of the club's more humble beginnings.
The walk up to the cemetery -- which lies amongs a clump of trees on the top of a hill -- passes
through a neighbourhood typical of small-town Mexico.
Roosters crow from back yards, ranchero music blasts from open windows and scabby dogs laze on the pavements.
Inside the cemetery walls, however, the atmosphere is distinctly English.
Only the direct descendants of the miners are allowed to be buried here and all the graves point
towards England -- with the exception of one, which according to legend was the grave of an anti-royalist Scotsman.
Pachuca's football team started out as an English-only affair, finally opening its doors to Mexican players
when David Islans made his debut in 1907.
Pachuca was one of only three clubs to survive the Mexican Revolution between 1910 and 1917 and won
the amateur championships in 1918 and 1920 under English manager Arthur Crowe.
After that, Pachuca was overshadowed by more powerful clubs from Mexico City and fell into a long
period of obscurity, enjoying only brief periods in the first division.
Everything changed dramatically in 1995 when local businessman Jesus Martinez bought the franchise
and years of careful planning and investment have turned the club into the envy of Mexico.
"We introduced an approach very few directors appreciate -- that to have a football team, you have
to have a social responsibilty," the club's sporting director Andres Fassi states the following,
"Our concept has four parts to it: the professional side, the social side, the academic side and
the commerical side."
FOOTBALL SCHOOLS
The professional side refers to the team itself, currently boasting several internationals including
Colombia goalkeeper Miguel Calero and midfielder Frankie Oviedo and Paraguay forward Nelson Cuevas.
The social side consists of 350 football schools, catering to 35,000 youngsters around the country
and with plans to expand within Central America and in South Africa and Cameroon.
Although partly planned to nurture talent for the club, Fassi says anyone is welcome to turn up.
"They pay what they can," he said. "Our doors are open to the tall, thin kid and the short, fat one."
The academic side is the university, which offers courses in coaching, nutrition, sports medicine and
physical education.
The new regime enjoyed quick success as Pachuca fought their way out of the second division in 1996.
Three years later Pachuca won the Winter championship -- two league championhips are played every season
in Mexico -- under Javier Aguirre, who coached Mexico at the 2002 World Cup and is now in charge of
Spanish first division club Osasuna.
Pachuca won further league titles in 2001 and 2003 and have shown no signs of wanting to stop there.
This year, they qualified for South America's Libertadores Cup -- the region's equivalent of the
Champions League -- and beat Argentina's Boca Juniors in the group stage before falling to fellow
Mexicans Guadalajara.
Off the field, Pachuca continue to grow and diversify. They own one of the town's top hotels and
broadcast a weekly television show, Tuzosoccer.