El hombre contra la máquina

Club de Futbol Cruz Azul S.A. de C.V., commonly referred to as Cruz Azul, is a professional football club based in Mexico City. The club competes in Liga MX, the top division of Mexican football. Founded in 1927 in Jasso, Hidalgo, by workers of the Cooperativa La Cruz Azul, as Club Deportivo, Social y Cultural Cruz Azul, A.C., the club relocated to Mexico City in 1971. It was renamed Cruz Azul Fútbol Club, A.C. in 2012, before adopting its current name in 2022. The team plays its home matches at Estadio Azteca, one of the largest stadiums in the world. Domestically, the club has won ten league titles, four Copa MX, four Campeón de Campeones, and holds the joint-record with one Supercopa de la Liga MX and one Supercopa MX. In international competitions, with seven titles, the club holds the joint-record for the most successful club in the history of the CONCACAF Champions Cup/Champions League. Cruz Azul also holds numerous distinctions, including being the club with the most league runner-up finishes (12), and the first team from CONCACAF to reach the final of the Copa Libertadores. In addition, the club achieved a continental treble in the 1968–69 season by winning the Primera División, Copa México and CONCACAF Champions' Cup, becoming the first CONCACAF club and third worldwide to accomplish this feat, and later the first club worldwide—and one of only five—to have won the continental treble twice. Cruz Azul's golden era came under manager Raúl Cárdenas, who led a three-peat in the CONCACAF Champions' Cup between 1969 and 1971 as the club established itself as a dominant force in Mexican football and earned its La Máquina (The Machine) nickname for its relentless scoring output during this period; Ignacio Trelles added back-to-back league titles at the turn of the 1980s, and between them the two managers delivered a combined seven league titles through the 1960s and 1970s. Juan Reynoso—a defender in the team's 1997 league title-winning squad—later managed the club to a ninth league title in 2021, its first during the Liga MX era, ending a 23-year wait for the domestic title. Joel Huiqui then guided Cruz Azul to a tenth league title in 2026. In 2026, Cruz Azul was named by the International Federation of Football History & Statistics as the 71st-best club in the world and the highest-ranked club in CONCACAF for the 2025 calendar year. Cruz Azul maintains a long-standing rivalry with América, a fixture commonly known as the Clásico Joven. According to several polls, it is the third-most popular team in Mexico, behind only América and Guadalajara. Within the Mexico City metropolitan area, it is generally regarded as the second-most supported club, behind América and ahead of Pumas UNAM. Cruz Azul is also one of seven Mexican clubs that have never been relegated. Together, these clubs are considered the Big Four of Mexican football.