Puebla is one of the struggling franchises in the Liga MX, always seeming to be on the cusp of relegation. La Franja has been in dark times for a while now, with no players that seem to stick on the team for more than a season and an ever-diminishing fan base.
Puebla played its third game in the Apertura 2017 edition of the Copa MX this Tuesday and the attendance at the Estadio Cuauhtémoc was a mere 2,616 spectators. While numbers like this had been seen before in the unpopular Copa MX competition, this time Puebla was almost giving away tickets to the game.
Tickets were priced at 20 and 30 Mexican pesos to watch the Copa MX clash against Xolos of Tijuana which translates to about $1.25 and $1.80. Almost everybody can afford to spend that kind of money; a bag of chips at the stadium will cost you more than the price of the ticket. Club Tijuana fans would hope that the price of a ticket was that low to watch the Xolos. To put it in perspective, parking for a Xolos game is five times more than the price of a ticket for this match at 100 pesos and tickets to a Copa MX match are also priced at 100 pesos.
The weather was horrid in Puebla with hail and even a thunderstorm, but still, the attendance was woeful for the bargain that was being dealt. People in the United States miss out on Thanksgiving with their families and fight other people for deals on Black Friday but people in Puebla could not go support their team on Tuesday night.
The beautiful Estadio Cuauhtémoc looked eerie and melancholic with over 40 thousand empty seats. The few fans that were there to watch the Copa MX bout turned on their own team as the dying minutes dealt another 1-1 draw against Club Tijuana. There were chants around the Cuauhtémoc directed at manager Rafael Garcia that said something along the lines of “Out with Chiquis”.
The fans are frustrated after years of being in the mix for relegation and the team is losing interest massively as the only other team with worst attendance than Los Camoteros is the other team from Puebla, Lobos BUAP. The highest number of fans that have filled the 46,928-seat fortress of the Estadio Cuauhtémoc has been a laughable 12,067 in week 2 of the Liga MX.
