Guillermo Ochoa walked onto the Azteca pitch. The crowd of 80,000 erupted
Before Guillermo Ochoa walked on, Mexico City’s Estadio Azteca stadium asked for him. Mexico were 2-0 up against Czechia, the group already won, 12 minutes left. The chant started somewhere in the upper tier and spread. “Ochoa, Ochoa, Ochoa.” Over 80,000 voices, singing as one, pleading for one last look at the man with the curls and the headband — known across Mexico simply as Memo and after that one afternoon in Fortaleza in 2014, as San Memo. Coach Javier Aguirre had left him on the bench for the first 78 minutes. The crowd had been patient. Now they were not. Then the board went up. Number 13. What followed was louder than any of the three goals Mexico had scored that evening — louder than anything the Azteca had produced all night, a volcanic eruption that drowned out everything else in the stadium. Ochoa, already on the verge of tears, walked onto the pitch he had played on for Club America as a teenager. He could barely keep it together. Every time the ball …
