Mexico just won every single game of the group stage. All three. First time in the country's history. Then they beat Ecuador 2-0 at the Azteca to break a knockout-stage curse that had followed them since 1986, the last time they hosted this tournament. Sunday, they play England for a spot in the quarterfinals.
We wrote a while back about why Argentina produces such exceptional talent. Mexico's summer is making the same case for a different country.
The Curse Was Never About Talent
For 40 years, Mexico had the players. They just kept running into bad luck, bad matchups, and one bad break too many at the wrong moment. This year the results finally caught up to the talent level that was already there.
We see the same disconnect in hiring. U.S. companies assume Latin American talent is a discount option, something you settle for instead of the real thing. Mexico's roster this summer says otherwise. So does the caliber of marketers and sales professionals we've gotten to know in Mexico City, Guadalajara, and Monterrey, people who've spent years selling to and marketing for U.S. audiences without ever needing to move here. The talent was never the question. Getting the right shot was.
Right now, the stars have aligned for Mexican talent to shine in U.S. markets. Remote work stopped being a novelty and became normal. U.S. companies got comfortable hiring outside their own zip code. Nearshoring went from a buzzword to a budget line. And a generation of Mexican professionals grew up fluent in English, steeped in U.S. marketing and sales playbooks, and one Zoom call away instead of a flight and a time zone away. The conditions that used to make this hard have quietly disappeared. What's left is a straight shot at talent that was ready long before the market caught up to it.
Mexico City Isn't Just a Host City
While the world watches Mexico play at the Azteca, Mexico City is also home to one of the fastest-growing marketing and sales scenes in Latin America. Agencies, growth teams, and enterprise sales orgs have been building there for years, quietly producing performance marketers, content strategists, and closers who now work fluently across U.S. tools, U.S. time zones, and U.S. business norms.
That's not a coincidence tied to the World Cup. It's the same reason Mexico's national team keeps producing talented players year after year. Real infrastructure, real coaching, and real opportunity compound over time.
The same compounding is happening off the field. Guadalajara has built a reputation as a genuine tech and startup hub, drawing talent that would once have moved to the U.S. to find serious work. Monterrey has a long history of producing sharp, commercially minded professionals who understand B2B sales cycles because they've been running them for U.S. companies for years. And Mexico City itself has become a landing spot for global brands opening regional offices, which means the local talent pool has already been tested against international standards, not just domestic ones.
None of that shows up on a highlight reel. It shows up in retention rates, in campaigns that actually convert, and in sales reps who close deals instead of just booking meetings. We built our talent network around exactly that kind of track record, not a resume that reads well.
Proximity Is the Whole Point
Mexico sits one to three hours from most U.S. time zones. A hire in Mexico City joins your morning standup without setting an alarm at 4am. That's true whether we're talking about a World Cup match kicking off at a reasonable hour for both fan bases, or a Slack thread that gets answered in real time instead of overnight.
Every match Mexico plays this summer is happening in front of a home crowd. Every hire we place from Mexico works inside that same advantage, close enough, in both time and culture, to actually be part of the team.
Compare that to hiring out of Eastern Europe or South Asia, where a seven-to-twelve-hour gap turns every real-time conversation into a scheduling puzzle. A campaign that needs a same-day revision, a sales call that needs a same-day follow-up, a launch that needs all hands on deck at 9am Eastern: all of that works when your hire is having their coffee at the same time you are. It stops working when they're asleep.
That's the part of nearshoring that's easy to underestimate until you've lived without it. It's not just about saving money. It's about hiring someone who can actually be present for the parts of the job that happen in real time. If you want to see what that looks like in practice, here's how we work.
The Run Continues
Whatever happens against England on Sunday, Mexico has already made its point this tournament. The marketing and sales talent has always been there. It just took the right stage.
That's the whole thesis behind El Dorado. We're not discovering something new when we introduce you to marketers and sales professionals out of Mexico. We're just making the introduction you hadn't gotten around to yet.