6 Words to Cheer for El Tri Like a Born Fan

Picture a packed bar in CDMX. Thirty people in green jerseys, two minutes to kickoff, and the guy on the next stool is already swearing El Tri is going to blow it. The TV is too loud. Your beer is cold. And everyone around you is screaming words you don’t recognize.

I’ve been in that exact room more times than I can count. The first time, I just nodded along and pretended I knew what was going on.

Took me a couple of matches to realize you don’t need fluent Spanish to belong there. You need about six words, said loud and at the right second.

The whole night runs on gol, el Tri, penal, the cursed árbitro, and the two phrases that bookend every match: ya merito when hope is alive, and ni modo when it dies.

Learn those and you’ll fit in at any bar in the country. Here’s exactly when to use each one.

The fan phrasebook at a glance

Here’s the whole kit. Six words, and the exact second each one belongs to.

Look at that list again. Half of it is about pain.

Being an El Tri fan is mostly hope, then heartbreak, then blaming the guy with the whistle. The words are built for exactly that.

El Tri, not la selección

Start here, because it’s the fastest tell. The team is officially la selección nacional, and the news anchors will call it that.

Fans almost never do. They say el Tri, short for el tricolor - the three colors of the flag.¹

La selección isn’t wrong, exactly. It just sounds like you’re reading the headline instead of living in the room.

At a bar with the game on, it’s el Tri, every single time.

• ¿A qué hora juega el Tri?
  What time does Mexico play?
• El Tri va a sufrir hoy, te lo digo.
  Mexico's gonna suffer today, I'm telling you.

That second line is a genre all its own. Mexican fans love calling the disaster before it happens - half joke, half emotional armor. Land a good doom prophecy before kickoff and you’re basically one of them already.

The goal: how to lose your voice correctly

When El Tri scores, there’s no calm version. None.

The word gol stretches into goooool, dragged out as long as your lungs hold. Radio narrators started this decades ago and the whole country still copies them.

The rule is simple: the bigger the moment, the longer the gol. A routine goal gets two seconds. A last-minute winner gets ten and a wrecked voice the next morning.

Right after, you pile on. Eso (that’s it), vamos (let’s go), and if the whole place erupts, no manches as pure disbelief. Something genuinely beautiful earns a qué padre or a chido once the screaming dies down.

• ¡Goooool! ¡Eso, eso, vamos!
  Goooool! Yes, yes, let's go!
• ¡No manches, qué golazo!
  No way, what a goal!

That last word, golazo, is gol with the -azo ending that means “a huge one.” A screamer from outside the box is a golazo.

Drop golazo at the right moment and the whole table turns to nod at you. Cheap to learn, big payoff.

Begging for the penal, screaming at the árbitro

Now the dark arts.

A penal is a penalty kick. Yes, the textbook says penalti - but nobody at the bar says that. They say penal, sharp and loud, both when they want one and when they got robbed of one.²

The second a defender so much as breathes on a Mexican attacker, the room turns into a courtroom. Suddenly everybody’s a referee. ¡Penal! ¡Es penal, árbitro!

And the árbitro - the referee - is the eternal enemy.³

When a call goes against El Tri, the classic accusation comes out: árbitro vendido, the ref’s been bought. It’s so common it’s almost affectionate at this point.

• ¡Eso es penal! ¿Qué no viste, árbitro?
  That's a penalty! Did you not see that, ref?
• Árbitro vendido, nos robaron otra vez.
  The ref's bought, they robbed us again.

You can dial the heat up with no manches for a bad call or a tired ya párale (knock it off) at the screen. The rougher words exist too, but among strangers, keep it at this level until you read the room.

Ya merito: the hope phase

Between the screaming there’s the tension, and it has a word too.

Ya merito means almost, any second now. When El Tri is camped in the other team’s box, passing and passing, the whole bar leans forward and starts muttering it under their breath.

It’s pure superstition, really. Say ya merito enough times and maybe the soccer gods deliver. They usually don’t. You say it anyway.

• Ya merito, ya merito... ¡ash, falló!
  Almost, almost... ugh, he missed!
• Ya casi, ya merito cae el gol.
  Almost there, the goal's about to drop any second.

You’ll also hear ya casi right next to it, same idea. Both are the sound of a country holding its breath.

The group chat survival guide

Here’s the part people forget. Half the match happens on your phone. The grupo lights up before, during, and after, and it follows a pretty predictable rhythm.

That last line, ya ni llorar es bueno, literally “now not even crying is any good,” is the dark-humor classic for when there’s truly nothing left to do. It pairs perfectly with ni modo.

The group chat is where the trash talk really lives, and honestly it’s a love language. Friends roast El Tri, the coach, the ref, and each other with zero mercy. The whole thing works because it’s aimed inward - your own team, your own friends. That’s fair game. Walking up to a stranger to insult their club is a different thing entirely.

When El Tri breaks your heart

It will. Trust me on this one.

The team has a long, painful habit of getting close and then falling short, so fans built a whole vocabulary to absorb it. The keystone is ni modo - oh well, nothing to do about it.

And ni modo isn’t giving up. If anything it’s the opposite. It’s how you let go of the result without letting it ruin the night. You say it, you sigh, you wave for another round, and you start mentally planning for the next tournament. That loop, honestly, is the real fan experience.

• Otra vez quedamos fuera. Ni modo, será la próxima.
  We're out again. Oh well, next time.
• Ni modo, así es el Tri. Ya ni llorar es bueno.
  Oh well, that's Mexico for you. Nothing left to do but laugh.

Who says all this, and where to be careful

This is bar-and-living-room language, said loud, among people who actually care.

The cheering and the doom jokes work anywhere fans gather. The harsher stuff at the árbitro stays fun as long as everyone’s mad at the same call. Just read the table first. A quiet family watch party at someone’s tía’s house is not a packed sports bar, and the volume should match.⁴

One safe rule: aim your roasting at El Tri, the coach, and the ref, never at the actual club of the person next to you. Mexican club rivalries (América versus Chivas especially) run deep, and a joke you think is light can land wrong with a stranger. Cheer hard, blame the ref freely, and save the personal jabs for friends who’ll fire back. That’s el Tri fandom in one sentence.