According to a Mexican soccer journalist who covers the team, Los Tigres UANL will have about 500 of their fans arriving from Monterrey for the opening round of the Champions Cup.
Los Tigres, ranked fourth overall among all club teams in Concacaf, visit Forge FC in the first game of a home-and-away series, Tuesday, Feb. 3, at Hamilton Stadium.
The second leg will be played Feb. 10 in the Estadio Universitario in the Monterrey suburb of San Nicolas de los Garza.
It’s expected that many other expats or soccer fans with Mexican heritage now living in the Greater Toronto-Hamilton area will also be at the game.
“People from Mexico are very passionate (about soccer), they’ll buy tickets for travel and the game,” says Ventura Andrade of the website Once Diario, which reports on soccer in northern Mexico.
“Soccer fans here know a lot about Forge because they played Monterrey, Tigres’ big rival, last year.”
Andrede anticipates that about 30,000 Tigres fans will be in their home stadium for the second leg.
Los Tigres began to make changes last season when two of their forwards didn’t return to the team—"(Sebastián) Córdoba and (Javier) Aquino were kind of legends”—and the club implied that veteran forwards André-Pierre Gignac and striker Nicolás would not be retained at the end of the 2025-26 apertura (first-half) season, leaving only Iván López among the top three.
But in last week’s 0-0 draw against Toluca, Ibáñez started at striker and was also in uniform was Gignac, a former French international who was the top scorer in the French Premier League in 2009, and has 192 goals since joining Tigres 11 years ago.
And that scoreless draw marked the 168th Liga MX game that Tigres goalkeeper Nahuel Guzmán has shut out the opposition, fourth-best all time. He has another 38 clean sheets in non-league play, but he, too, was deemed to be heading elsewhere in the Christmas break. But he’s played well with only one goal against in the three Clausura (second half) games Tigres have played this month.
“I think sometimes it comes down to a club trying to make some other signings that don’t materialize so you go with the devil you know,” Forge head coach Bobby Smyrniotis theorises about the Monterrey side’s apparent plans.
It was only mid-December when Los Tigres were edged 9-8 in Toluca in penalty kicks after overtime in the apertura championship final. The series had been knotted 2-2 after a 1-0 victory in Monterrey in the opening leg. Yet there were many fresh faces when the two teams met again last week in Monterrey for the 0-0 clausura draw.
Of the five defenders Los Tigres started on the back line in that December game, only one — Brazilian Joaquim Henrique — started on the four-man defence last week. And only one other current back, Osvaldo Rodriguez, was in uniform for the title game, just a month ago. Juan Sanchez was on the team but not dressed for the playoff finale. He has started all three games this year, though, and has a yellow card in each game, leading to a red card, which left Tigres a man short for the final half-hour last week.
“He’s a tough guy,” Andrade says of Sanchez. “He’s saved three or four goals with headers. But like Marcelo Flores, he needs to be more consistent. In Monterrey, football (soccer) is the king of sports, and the players feel the pressure; and that’s a tough moment for those who don’t deal with the pressure. A guy like Gignac can deal with the pressure—don’t worry about it—but the younger guys like Marcelo and like Sanchez, it’s tough on them.”
Marcelo is a right winger, Marcelo Flores, who is a Canadian from Georgetown, Ontario and is being courted by both the Mexican and Canadian national senior teams and must make his decision soon. After playing in England’s Arsenal system, then being loaned to a Spanish first-division team, Flores joined Los Tigres in 2022. He has scored the only two goals Tigres have managed this year, against San Luis in a season opener, which was followed by a loss and then the scoreless draw.
“They were both beautiful goals and gave them three points in the first game, and that’s important,” Andrade says. “But he needs to be more consistent. If you can make a good 60-70 technical minutes, it’s good for him.”
Off to a slow start and causing concern in the rabid Monterrey soccer community, Tigres are still solidifying their formations and trying different combinations of players. Flores, for instance, started one game and came in for star Diego Lainez in the other. But there are other quality mainstays in the likes of Argentine Angel Correa and fellow winger Uriel Antuna, who was a force for Cruz Azul when Forge played the Mexico City team in 2022. Forge’s experienced back line will have to be at the top of its collective game against them.
“To be honest, they need another centre back,” Andrede says. “There were a lot of changes, and it’s a process where the young players are making the base of the future team.”