Ahead of the FIFA World Cup, pickup soccer games in Mexico’s streets are all the rage

MEXICO CITY — On this pitch there’s no goalkeepers, no grass, no referees. With a little spray paint, any street in the Mexican capital is transformed into a soccer field, and its residents and sometimes tourists become the players.

It’s a street form of soccer that has regained popularity fueled by the excitement surrounding the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

In November, four Mexicans founded “Reta Mexa” on social media, where they invite soccer fans to play impromptu matches every Friday on different streets in Mexico City.

“I have a son who loves soccer, and I see that he and his generation have become stuck at home,” explained Roy Jiménez, one of the four founders and father of Luis Enrique, a 12-year-old boy.

Playing soccer in the streets is known among Mexicans as a “reta,” a word that means “duel” or “challenge.” It’s part of the country’s longstanding street soccer culture that originated mainly among children, but which had been fading due to worries over street safety and the popularity of indoor video games.

“This is to show my son that you can still play in the streets,” Jiménez, a 37-year-old lawyer, said.

A recent game that Noticias Telemundo attended took place midday under the Mexico City heat on a street in Roma, a neighborhood popular with tourists and digital nomads from the U.S. Jiménez and his son used orange spray paint to mark the corners of the 50-by-10-foot field, which was flanked by the cars and motorcycles of the block’s residents.

Initially, 12 young men showed up for the pickup game. One of them was 21-year-old Jesús González, another Reta Mexico founder and the grandson of Enrique Borja, a famous soccer player from the 1990s.

“We got together, saw a closed street, and saw it as an opportunity to set up two goals and a ball, and we invited passersby to join in,” said González, who played semi-professionally for Mexican teams.

Another player who joined was El Bebé del Futbol (The Soccer Baby), a 29-year-old who wears a child’s mask while playing and who doesn’t reveal his name. El Bebé is originally from the Tepito neighborhood, a working-class area five miles from where the game was being held.

“I was born in a poor neighborhood, and my whole life has revolved around soccer,” El Bebé said. “You either misbehave or you stay on the right path, and thanks to soccer, I’m on the right path.”

The group is using old soccer goals. Jiménez explained that he found them abandoned at his parents’ house; they’re small because they were originally for children to use.

A game for everyone

The matches are played in teams of three, and the first team to score two goals wins. They are very intense matches, but they last about 15 minutes. Since the field is in the middle of the street, the game often has to be briefly paused so that drivers or delivery drivers on motorcycles can pass. Spectators and curious passersby gather around, and to play, they simply have to challenge the winners.

Hannah, Edd and Kenny, British tourists aged 21, 24 and 20, were walking along the sidewalk when they stopped to watch the game. At the end of one of the matches, González invited them to play. Although none of them spoke Spanish, the three decided to join in. They didn’t win the game, but they said it was a winning experience.

“It was so much fun, this doesn’t happen in the U.K.,” Hannah said. “I think this really represents Mexican culture, that they include everyone, that foreigners play with locals.”

Edd is a soccer enthusiast who had played occasionally in the U.K., but he said he’d never done so in the middle of the street.

“This culture is so exciting,” he said.

“Mexicans are so good with their feet; they’re much better than the British,” Edd said, adding he was jealous of anyone who gets to come to Mexico for the upcoming World Cup.

Mexico is one of the three host countries for the 2026 World Cup, along with the United States and Canada. Thirteen matches will be played in three stadiums: one in Guadalajara, one in Mexico City and a third in Monterrey.

Regarding the impromptu soccer game they joined, Kenny said he thought it exemplified the “great community” that exists in Mexico.

“It shows how open the country is to tourists and people who don’t live here,” he said.