How Cornish miners brought football to Mexico

Sport InsightHow Cornish miners brought football to MexicoPublished2 June 2026Image source, Eduardo HernandezByHenry CowlingBBC Sport journalistInside the 25,000-seater Estadio Hidalgo in east-central Mexico, fans unfurl a tifo featuring a miner.In one hand he wields a pickaxe and the other a pastry with a distinctly crimped edge.He is flanked by two flags, both the same - black with a white cross.To anyone with a knowledge of the United Kingdom's southernmost county, this figure is instantly recognisable as Cornish.The fans of CF Pachuca, widely recognised as Mexico's first football club, are paying tribute to their roots.They are celebrating the story of how miners from Cornwall played their part in introducing the game to what has become one of the world's most passionate footballing nations, and one of this year's World Cup co-hosts.The transatlantic connection between Hidalgo and Cornwall starts all the way back in 1824.Mexico's mining sector, which had been the bedrock of the country's economic success, was in ruins after a decade-long war that resulted in independence from Spain.Its plight caught the eye of a mining engineer called John Taylor, who had been investing in Cornish mining with great success, particularly in the village of Gwennap."He had taken a group of failing and flooded mines and turned them into a success and he looked at the mines of Real del Monte and thought, 'I can do the same there'," Cornish mining migration specialist Dr Sharron Schwartz tells BBC Sport.His involvement led to hundreds of Cornishmen going back and forth between Cornwall and Hidalgo in the coming decades.With this migration came a sharing of ideas, culture - and, of course, sport.Listen: Not by the Playbook - How Cornish miners brought football to MexicoAttributionSoundsThe first reference on record to Cornish miners playing sport in Hidalgo is actually about cricket.In the late 1850s, before Association Football rules h...