Priced out of World Cup games, Mexican fans take celebrations into their own hands

MEXICO CITY (AP) — “GOOOOOOOOOAL!”

The thunderous cry rings out over a crowd gathered in front of a television propped up on plastic tables and past a maze of vendors lining a bustling working-class neighborhood in downtown Mexico City. It echoes over fans across the Latin American nation, who roar as they watch Mexico's national team win another match in the FIFA World Cup with eyes glued to screens set up in plazas, below highway underpasses and tucked away in taco stands.

Priced out of stadium tickets to the tournament their country is hosting alongside the U.S. and Canada, many Mexicans are reclaiming the event and staging their own celebrations on the streets.

“Honestly, there’s nothing like going to the stadiums, but I prefer being here in the street. … For me it’s like watching the game from my living room,” said Esmeralda Serrato, who watched a TV in the street with dozens of neighbors. “I feel the blood rushing through my veins saying ‘This is the World Cup.’”

World Cup festivities in Mexico have generated an almost incalculable buzz as hundreds of thousands of people gather in mass celebrations in host cities including Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey following the country’s two consecutive victories.

But the street parties also come after months of scrutiny as FIFA has faced searing criticism across the globe for soaring World Cup ticket prices. In Mexico, where the average worker earns around $433 a month and soccer is considered a sport that unites people across class, the gap between who can and cannot get into games is felt acutely.

That has fueled social tensions and left many Mexicans feeling as if “it’s a party we weren’t invited to,” said Diego Merla, fiscal justice coordinator for Oxfam Mexico.

“The World Cup is built around the logic of squeezing as much value out of it as possible,” Merla said. “It’s about getting those who are willing and able to pay the absolute maximum. And that ends up excluding a lot of people.”

Earlier this year, tickets went on sale at prices ranging from $140 to $8,680, but have since skyrocketed, with some tickets to the World Cup final costing around $32,970.

In the wake of mounting criticisms, FIFA President Gianni Infantino has defended high ticket prices as fitting the U.S. market.

“You cannot go to watch in the U.S. a college game, not even speaking about a top professional game of a certain level, for less than $300,” Infantino said. “And this is the World Cup.”

For fans like Guillermo Ramírez, the solution was to take things into their own hands.

Ramírez, 49, is a native of Tepito, the working-class Mexico City neighborhood that is home to sprawling street markets packed with pirated World Cup jerseys.

Here, soccer is a symbol of resistance and local identity in an area of the city most commonly associated with crime. Nestled in the heart of the dense markets is a soccer field named after Bernardo Manolete Hernández, a renowned Mexican soccer player born in the neighborhood.

Just a block away from the field, Ramírez, wearing a bright green and white Mexico jersey, set up a TV screen and speakers on top of two plastic tables in front of his house and small corner shop before Mexico faced off against South Korea. He remembers as a young boy watching the 1986 Mexico World Cup from TVs set up by neighbors unable to get into stadiums.

“There are a lot of us who simply can’t afford to go to the stadium,” Ramírez said. “Tepito is a soccer barrio, and when there’s a match on, everyone takes out their TVs to watch, especially now during the World Cup.”

Throngs of neighbors crowd around his screen, wearing green and red lucha libre masks, cradling their kids and cracking open a beer from Ramírez’s corner shop.

When their team wins, Ramírez's neighbors and large swaths of Mexico City erupt, with tens of thousands of people flooding the streets and flocking to Mexico City's central monument, the Angel de la Independencia.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has also criticized the costs and said last week that FIFA leaders should reflect on their pricing decisions.

“Soccer has to be something else,” Sheinbaum said.

Sheinbaum has encouraged fans to gather in free public watch parties set up by local governments and FIFA in Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey. Nearly 20 such venues dot the Mexican capital, including in lower-income areas of the city.

For one game, over 200,000 Mexican and foreign fans packed into the city's main plaza, the Zocalo, as a sea of Mexico jerseys threw crowd surfers into the air.

Armando Soriano, his wife and two children traveled from the fringes of the city to a smaller Fan Fest in a plaza just a mile from where Ramírez lives, where locals rolled up to the screen before them on motorcycles and beer, tequila and snacks were sold from plastic tubs strapped to moving carts.

To him, it felt more Mexican than the central FIFA event, he said.

“I want (my family) to be swept up in the spirit — to feel, more than anything, what it means to be Mexican, and to experience the traditions that people here live and breathe,” Soriano said.

Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

A general view before the World Cup Group A soccer match between Mexico and South Korea in Zapopan, near Guadalajara, Mexico, Thursday, June 18, 2026. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)

Workers eat at the Juarez market where a monitor shows the World Cup soccer match between Argentina and Austria in Mexico City, Monday, June 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)

Mexico soccer fans watch a World Cup match between Mexico and South Korea in the Tepito neighborhood of Mexico City, Thursday, June 18, 2026. (AP Photo/Megan Janetsky)

Fans celebrate in a fan zone in Monterrey, Mexico, after Mexico defeated South Korea in a World Cup Group A soccer match in Zapopan, Mexico, Thursday, June 18, 2026. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)

Mexican fans celebrate after beating South Korea during the World Cup Group A soccer match, at the Angel of Independence monument in Mexico City, Thursday, June 18, 2026. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran’s president was traveling to Pakistan on Tuesday for talks with officials who have been mediating negotiations between Tehran and Washington on a permanent end to the war in the Middle East.

President Masoud Pezeshkian’s visit to Islamabad comes as technical teams are working on details of the deal, following high-level negotiations in Switzerland on Monday led by US Vice President JD Vance and Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf.

Vance had said that the negotiations in Switzerland won an agreement for International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors to visit Iranian nuclear sites, but Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei told reporters in Tehran on Tuesday no visits have been scheduled to the facilities earlier bombed by the United States.

The IAEA, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, has been in and out of Iran since Israel’s 12-day war against Iran in 2025, but has not been granted access to the bombed enrichment sites targeted by the U.S. in that war.

Security was tight in the area of Islamabad where the Iranian president was to meet with President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. It's his first visit since the conflict started with the American and Israeli attack on Iran on Feb. 28.

Pezeshkian and Sharif were to hold joint news conference after their discussions.

In the initial talks, marking the start of a 60-day diplomatic process that seeks to reach a permanent deal to end the Iran war, Iran and the U.S. agreed to create a “de-confliction cell” to address the fighting in Lebanon between Israel and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia group. The U.S. said negotiators also discussed “mechanisms” to ensure the Strait of Hormuz, a key waterway for the transit of oil that Iran had effectively blocked during the war, remains open.

Ahead of his meetings in Pakistan, Pezeshkian cautioned that “the effectiveness of the talks depends on full commitment to the agreed obligations and their precise implementation.”

“Progress on this path will be measured by practical adherence to accepted responsibilities,” he wrote on X. “Statements outside the agreed text do not help advance the negotiations.”

Iran suggested the ongoing technical talks in Switzerland have led to the creation of specific negotiation groups, which include those focused on sanctions relief, nuclear issues, reconstruction and monitoring, according to a report by the state-run IRNA news agency.

It quoted Kazem Gharibabadi, a deputy foreign minister leading the technical talks, saying that the countries involved also formed a contact mechanism over ships moving through the Strait of Hormuz and over the fighting in Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah.

It remains unclear whether the de-confliction cell being created will be enough to stop fighting between Hezbollah and Israel, which occupies part of Lebanon and insists it must maintain a free hand to attack militants who are launching attacks into northern Israel.

Mediators Pakistan and Qatar said the cell would include the Lebanese government and would “ensure the adherence of the termination of military operations in Lebanon,” but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu raised new questions late Monday, saying his military still has “full freedom of action to thwart any direct or emerging threat to them or to the residents of the north.”

Neither Israel nor Hezbollah are signatories to the U.S.-Iran deal, and Netanyahu has vowed to keep his forces in southern Lebanon until any threat to Israel is eliminated. Hezbollah has refused to halt attacks unless Israel commits to withdrawing.

U.S. President Donald Trump later said “we’re going to take a look at it,” when asked about Netanyahu’s comments, adding that he wouldn’t say what action he would take but that the situation would “get solved.”

“I’m a problem solver, I get problems solved real fast, including with Bibi,” he said, using a nickname for Netanyahu.

At the moment, the renewed ceasefire in Lebanon, brokered on Saturday, appears to be holding with no new Israeli or Hezbollah strikes reported overnight.

Lebanon and Israel planned another round of direct talks in Washington on Tuesday, which are expected to focus on developing a plan for an Israeli withdrawal.

Rising reported from Bangkok. Ahmed from Islamabad. Associated Press writers Abby Sewell in Beirut and Nasser Karimi in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.

A man walks past a welcoming billboard featuring Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian along a roadside in Islamabad, Pakistan, Tuesday, June 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Anjum Naveed)

Vehicles drives past welcoming billboards featuring Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, right, with Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari, center, and Shehbaz Sharif alongside an overhead bridge in Islamabad, Pakistan, Tuesday, June 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Anjum Naveed)

A man walks past a welcoming billboard featuring Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, center, with Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari, right, and Shehbaz Sharif along a roadside in Islamabad, Pakistan, Tuesday, June 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Anjum Naveed)

The welcoming billboard, featuring Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, right, with Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari, center, and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, is displayed alongside of an overhead bridge, in Islamabad, Pakistan, Tuesday, June 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Anjum Naveed)

A woman walks past a welcoming billboard featuring Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian along a roadside in Islamabad, Pakistan, Tuesday, June 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Anjum Naveed)