A disastrous season for Guadalajara’s top two soccer teams, Chivas and Atlas, has been offset by the change in fortunes for the Universidad de Guadalajara’s Leones Negros (Black Lions), who won the Ascencio MX league crown last weekend and are within one playoff game – to be held next May – of returning to the Liga MX, the top tier of Mexican soccer.
University chiefs must have been thrilled to see 55,000 boisterous fans cram into the city’s Jalisco Stadium for the first game of the two-legged final against Necaxa. Not even Atlas or Chivas managed to draw such a crowd during the season.
Some 500 fans waited until the early hours of Sunday morning to receive the team at the university’s rectory on its return from Ciudad Victoria following the 1-0 second leg victory over Necaxa last Sunday. The next day they took the trophy to the Government Palace for a reception hosted by Governor Aristoteles Sandoval.Formed in 1970, the Leones Negros have been runners-up in Mexico’s top professional league on three occasions: 1977, 1978 and 1990. Relegated in 1997, the university disbanded the Leones for almost a decade. Returning to the Ascencio MX (2nd division) in 2009, the team has made great strides, relying on a good blend of home-grown and foreign talent.
Fans – mostly ex- and current alumni – should see considerable investment in the squad should the Leones win May’s playoff game (against the winners of the January to May clausura season) and return to the top tier, according to UDG Rector Tonatiuh Bravo. However, he stressed that funding would have to come from private sources and not from the university’s budget, which he regularly claims is insufficient for the needs of Mexico’s second-largest public university.