Mexico’s greatest soccer team drank tequila in this cantina before every game
Guadalajara’s Los Famosos Equipales cantina was founded in 1920.
Today’s professional soccer players must follow super-strict diets to ensure they’re in optimum physical condition when they step onto the pitch, but this has not always been the case. In mid-20th-century Mexico—long before sports nutrition was a thing—the stars of Chivas de Guadalajara, the nation’s most popular soccer team, had a very different way of preparing for each game: getting fired up on tequila.
The Chivas team from this era is widely regarded as the greatest in Mexican history. Known as the “Campeonísimo” or “ultimate champions,” they won 15 trophies, including seven Mexican league titles, in eight years from 1957 to 1965. But was pre-gaming the secret to their success?
Cuco the waiter prepares the house cocktail “Nalgas Alegres” (Happy Buttocks).
Cuco, a senior waiter at Los Famosos Equipales cantina in downtown Guadalajara, tells me the players used to come in for a quick refreshment on the morning of each game. “They would come in at 11 AM and down a shot or two of tequila and then go and play at 11:30,” Cuco says. “It was a tradition they had so that they’d start the game feeling happy.”
The Tequila Files 