A combination of results could put Lionel Messi and Andrés Fassi face to face in a month and a half. The meeting that until a couple of weeks ago would have generated a utopian friendly between PSG of France and Talleres, could materialize in the Leagues Cup, the first binational club tournament that will host 47 teams from the United States and Mexico between July 21 and next August 19, and which will grant three places for the 2024 Concacaf Champions League.
In this competition, Inter Miami, the brand new “la Pulga” team that plays in Major League Soccer (MLS), has a chance to cross paths in the round of 16 stage (from August 6 to 8) with Fútbol Club Juárez , Liga MX franchise whose sporting destiny is formally in the hands of the current president of the ‘T’ since June 1.
Fassi is “the fourth leg of the table” in a company that also includes Alejandra de la Vega (head of the board of directors of the Aztec entity) and her husband Paul Foster (considered “the richest man in Texas” and current number 1,434 in the world in the Forbes ranking) and the American duo Woody Hunt-Joshua Hunt, respectively father and son.
De la Vega, Foster and the Hunts are the owners of MountainStar Sports Group (MSSG), a consortium that manages the Juárez Fútbol Club and that, on the other side of the Rio Grande, manages the Los Chihuahuas baseball team and a cast from the second division of American Soccer: El Paso Locomotive FC.
In tandem with this powerful business group on the strategic border between the United States and Mexico, Fassi negotiates his long-awaited landing in Spanish soccer. After successive and unsuccessful flirtations with Málaga, Real Espanyol, Lugo, Deportivo La Coruña and Burgos, MSSG is trying to achieve its objective with the purchase of Granada, which has just been promoted to the League and since 2009 has been owned by the Chinese corporation Wuhan Double.
MARRIAGE AND SOMETHING ELSE. Paul Foster, considered the richest man in Texas, and his wife Alejandra de la Vega, heiress to one of the largest fortunes in Ciudad Juárez. /// PHOTO: CEDOC PROFILE
old acquaintances
Fassi is not a nobody in Ciudad Juárez. There he landed for the first time in 1990 to work as a physical trainer for the extinct Club Cobras, integrating the coaching staff led by Carlos ‘Chamaco’ Rodríguez. The entity was owned by the engineer and businessman Federico de la Vega Mathews, who in those years anointed his daughter Alejandra as the first woman to hold the presidency of an Aztec soccer institution.
A quarter of a century later, the heiress of the De la Vega emporium would recover the city’s soccer arena, founding FC Juárez, also known by the pseudonym ‘Los Bravos’. This team replaced Indios, a kind of missing link between Cobras and FC Juárez, which appeared between 2005 and 2015 and became a subsidiary of Pachuca, the institution where Fassi served as vice president and shareholder for three decades.
“Since those days, a friendship remained and Andrés maintained a constant link with the De la Vega family. In addition, he was always clear about the potential of the border as a niche for sports ventures,” Mexican journalist Armando Isáis told PROFILE CÓRDOBA. “The great paradox is that everything he did later in Pachuca, he had proposed at the time to do it here,” the colleague pointed out.
The Ciudad Juárez reporter said that Alejandra de la Vega’s conversations with Fassi, aimed at adding the Cordoba businessman and sports leader to the MountainStar Sports Group projects, appeared “during the break before the 2022-2023 season.”
TO THE CONQUEST OF THE OLD WORLD. Fassi and his new partners try to land in Spanish football. They have already made arrangements in several clubs. /// PHOTO: CEDOC PROFILE
The fifth element
Although ‘on paper’ has only been a partner and sports manager of the border consortium for a couple of weeks, Fassi has been working for FC Juárez for months with a fixed idea: “My intention is to make ‘Los Bravos’ one of the best teams in Mexico.
Even before the epilogue of the previous season, the president of Talleres began to get his hands on the structure of the Juárez club. At the beginning of the year the arrivals of the footballers Agustín Ursi (ex Banfield), Tomás Molina (ex Huracán and Ferro), the brothers Alan and Joel Soñora (with respective pasts in Independiente and Talleres), and the Paraguayan youth Kevin Pereira will appear. , whose pass belongs to the ‘T’. More recently, in the last days of the Clausura Tournament, he hired the Mexican Diego Mejía as the new coach, replacing the Argentine Hernán Cristante.
Then he added other acquaintances from his management in the Jardín neighborhood: former video analyst Carlos Di Pasqua (he will be the new sports manager), former reserve coach Andrés Navarro and physical trainer Alexis Olariaga. As part of the restructuring plan that it is carrying out – “the reconstruction of the team and the reorganization of the basic forces” – Fassi also appointed Humberto ‘Beto’ Valdés, a former Cruz Azul soccer player and former television commentator for the FOX network, as sports director.
“Here we are beginning to see some details of Fassi’s management in Talleres,” says journalist Isáis from Ciudad Juárez. “Contrary to what many think, ‘Los Bravos’ must be the richest club in Liga MX, since there is a very heavy fortune behind it. That is why I believe that the idea of taking a leap in quality and turning it into a cutting-edge team based on good sports management is not unreasonable, ”says the Aztec communicator.
CLOSE ENCOUNTER. Inter Miami, Lionel Messi’s team, could cross paths with FC Juárez, the Mexican club whose sports management is in charge of Fassi, in a new binational tournament. /// PHOTO: CEDOC PROFILE
unlimited
In the previous season, FC Juárez ranked 11th in the Apertura and 16th in the Closing, and on the latter date it avoided paying the so-called ‘quotient fine’ for the third consecutive year (US$1.8 million, US$ 2.6 million and US$ 4.4 million, respectively) for being among the three worst averages in a competition that has no declines.
In the United States, the goals of El Paso Locomotive, a team popularly known as ‘el Loco’, are much more modest than those of their Mexican ‘cousin’. In this case, the idea is to maintain a place in United League Soccer, the development league, since the club lacks adequate infrastructure (it shares its stadium, with a capacity for 7,500 spectators, with ‘Los Chihuahuas’ from baseball) and the MLS’s expansion plan doesn’t have him on its radar, at least not immediately.
Before Inter Miami confirmed the hiring of Messi for the next three seasons, access to a franchise in the elite of American soccer was quoted at half a billion dollars, and it is estimated that the landing of ‘la Pulga’ will raise the ‘rate’ at least 30 percent.
‘Los Bravos’ and ‘Los Locos’ starred in two friendlies in 2021, a kind of ‘border classic’ between the neighboring teams of Ciudad Juárez and El Paso. The particularity of these matches is that they were played in full force of the movement restrictions due to the coronavirus pandemic. Despite this, the influences of the De la Vega-Foster couple, from both sides of the map, made it possible for players and the coaching staff to cross the international path that connects both cities on foot.
“Handling the sports management of ‘Los Locos’ is also very important for Fassi, since it will allow him to enter a football market that today has no limits”, specified the journalist Isáis.
HUNTING AND HUNTING. Woody and Joshua, father and son, complete the quartet of businessmen associated with Fassi that operates between Chihuahua and Texas. /// PHOTO: CEDOC PROFILE
Who are De la Vega, Foster and the Hunts?
With multiple investments in different areas and a ‘sheet’ of philanthropists, the Mexican Alejandra de la Vega, her American husband Paul Foster and the Texans Woody and Joshua Hunt are the four billionaires who joined Andrés Fassi as a new partner of MountainStar Sports Group, a consortium that operates in the El Paso-Ciudad Juárez border corridor.
De la Vega is 56 years old, is an industrial and systems engineer, and serves as the highest authority on the Board of Managers of FC Juárez. In the ’90s she was president of Cobras, an extinct club in the city of Chihuahuan. She is a member of the Business Coordinating Council and the Border Civil Society, she held a public position in the Secretary of Innovation and Economic Development of the State of Chihuahua and a few years ago she flirted with the candidacy for mayor for the National Action Party (PAN).
She is also part of the board of directors of El Paso Locomotive and El Paso Chihuahuas, the respective soccer and baseball franchises that are owned by her husband, the tycoon Foster (65), a man specialized in the refinery business and considered the richest of Texas.
Oil has also been the main source of income for the Hunts, father Woody and son Josh, both financial experts and owners of a powerful tenure which includes a ‘sports leg’, Hunt Sport Group.
Through this company, the H&H duo controls the Kansas City Chiefs, the last champion of the NFL (National Football League), and the Football Club Dallas of MLS (Major League Soccer). It also has a minority stake in the Chicago Bulls of the NBA, the world’s top basketball league.
THE TRIANGLE OF THE BOOTS
- The participation of Andrés Fassi in multiple sporting projects could influence the next transfer market, with some probable ‘castling’ of footballers that has come to light in recent days.
- To the versions that account for the possible transfer of the defender from Talleres Juan Gabriel Rodríguez to Granada FC in Spain, there are speculations with other proper names. One is Diego Valoyes, the Colombian striker with the ‘T’ that sounds more and more loud at FC Juárez in Mexico.
- Another is Maximiliano Olivera, a Uruguayan defender with a past at Peñarol in Montevideo, Fiorentina in Italy and Olimpia in Paraguay, who has just parted ways with ‘Los Bravos’ and could land in the Jardín neighborhood.
The succession is already underway
“We send a big greeting to Andrés Fassi, and also to the friend… to the friend… to the friend Gerardo Moyano Cires, who has been working so well at Talleres!” Beyond the effort that he will have made to accommodate the roles, the TV reporter’s lack of spontaneity was too noticeable. The allusion, clearly, was part of a communication strategy to start installing another reference name in the albiazul club.
Any similarity with a press operation did not seem coincidental. In December 2025, Fassi’s third term will culminate in the ‘T’, who – unless there is a statutory reform – will not be able to stand for a future period. What’s more: if the rumors coming from Mexico are confirmed, and that they realize that the requirement to occupy the highest position in the Spanish club that MountainStar Sports buys (Granada CF?) is part of their agreement to join that consortium , the incompatibility of charges could make you request an advance license in the Jardín neighborhood.
Sooner or later, Fassi already knows that he will abdicate. And that he will do it in favor of his nephew Moyano Cires, current 1st Vice President and General Director of Talleres. The dolphin of the strong man of the ‘T’ is 37 years old, has a degree in Business Administration and has just received the FIFA Diploma in Club Management, as well as being blessed with a few ‘free minutes’ to begin to familiarize himself with the media exposure.
HEIR. Gerardo Moyano Cires, current 1st Vice President and General Director of Talleres, is emerging as Fassi’s successor at the Albiazul club. /// PHOTO: CEDOC PROFILE
