La Máquina Runs Dry: Cruz Azul and the 144-Match Streak That Just Broke

Estadio Banorte. The blue banners are still up on the eastern stand, the words "Azul de corazón" faded by the sun. Cruz Azul supporters still come, still sing, still carry the belief of an unfinished season. But one thing is missing, and the whole stadium knows exactly what it is: goals.

Two matches without a single goal. Two defeats. One against Rayados de Monterrey. One against Inter Miami. Behind those two results sits a number that silenced the press room for a few seconds: 144.

The last time Cruz Azul failed to score in two consecutive matches was at the start of Clausura 2026, under Martín Anselmi. Since then, 144 matches have passed without that stream ever drying up. Now it has.

Cruz Azul is one of the biggest clubs in Liga MX. The nickname La Máquina — the Machine — was not handed out as a joke. In Ciudad de México, this club's season is not measured by trophies but by whether it stays in the upper group. The pressure here does not come from the table. It comes from history.

And history is now pressing down on Joel Huiqui.

I have followed Liga MX long enough to know that in Mexico, a coach is never judged only by results. He is judged by where he stands in the flow of memory. When the media write that Cruz Azul has "reached a negative milestone not seen since the Anselmi era", they are not merely reporting. They are placing a ruler on the table and inviting the reader to measure.

That is why two matches — only two — carry such weight.

From a pure data standpoint, this is far too small a sample to conclude anything. Two goalless matches sit within the normal range of a top-flight season. A team can take twenty shots, post a high expected-goals figure, dominate possession, and still walk away empty-handed. Football does not pay for probability. It pays for goals. The difference between a broken attacking system and an unlucky front line cannot be seen in a scoreline. It can only be seen in chance data.

And this is the first point where I want to stop: I hold not a single chance-creation metric for these two matches. No expected goals, no expected goals against, no shot counts, no possession share, no pressing-intensity figure. All we have are two scorelines and one historical milestone.

That does not make the story smaller. It makes the story different.

Because when process data is absent, people default to using results to explain process. That is a natural reflex for both media and supporters, and it is the biggest trap in this trade. A team that loses two matches without scoring is read as an attack in paralysis. A team that wins two matches through a ninetieth-minute goal is read as having character. Both readings are equally cheap.

So look at the number 144.

A club that scores in 144 consecutive matches is not a lucky club. It is a club with an attacking structure so reliably stable that it has produced chances across multiple seasons, multiple coaching regimes, multiple generations of players. If that system had truly collapsed, it would not collapse in two matches. It would collapse over two months, and the warning signs would have come first.

The more reasonable reading — and I say this as someone who has sat in enough meeting rooms to know how decisions get made — is that this is a short phase of misalignment. Chances still arrive. The ball simply will not go in. Phases like this end on their own, usually through an ugly goal, an own goal, a scrambled corner. Football has its own way of healing droughts.

The one exception: if the attack is hurting for personnel. But there is no injury information, no starting lineup, no confirmation that Huiqui changed personnel or shape during those two defeats. All of it is a blank.

And there is one detail I have saved for the end of this section, because it matters more than it looks.

The defeat to Inter Miami. Which competition was that match in? Liga MX? A domestic cup? A friendly? No source in the material I have confirms it. If it was a friendly or an unofficial match, then folding it into the same sequence as the Monterrey defeat is faulty arithmetic. Two events of different nature are being added together and the sum is being called a crisis.

This is where I have to speak plainly about source quality.

Most of the information in this story has no clear origin. No specific publication date. No quotes from the club, from the coaching staff, from players. Only a single photo caption crediting IMAGO7. For a story labelled a disaster in its own headline, that level of verification is low. And when verification is low, the temperature of the story tends to run hotter than reality.

I have been in this trade long enough to know one rule: when the headline shouts louder than the body text, suspect the editorial design.

Here is the counterpoint, and I want to state it clearly: the greatest pressure at Cruz Azul right now rests on the narrative about the attack, more than on the attack itself. Two goalless matches may simply be two goalless matches. But when a major club steps into that sequence with a 144-match scoring streak as its backdrop, the story acquires its own weight. And that weight falls on one man: Joel Huiqui.

In Mexico, a coach's seat at a big club is not measured in wins. It is measured by the gap between the stand's expectations and what happens on the pitch. At Cruz Azul, that gap is always zero. A draw might be normal in Toluca, but at Estadio Banorte it is a problem.

That is why the Toluca match matters far more than the value of three points.

Toluca is the direct test. If Cruz Azul score early, the entire crisis narrative evaporates within forty-eight hours. The media pivot to the "drought is over" frame. Headlines change. Pressure dissolves. That is how the media cycle works: it does not cling to the truth, it clings to the most recent match.

If Cruz Azul fail to score again, everything shifts. Not because two matches became three, but because the question changes in nature. People will stop asking why the team cannot score. They will start asking whether Huiqui is the right man. That is an entirely different question, and statistics cannot answer it.

That is why I always slow down in front of two-match samples. I have seen too many coaches condemned by a run of three and canonised by another run of three. Football does not operate on that logic. People do.

At sixty-two, I no longer chase breaking news. I wait to see how people keep their word. And in this story, what I am waiting for does not lie in the goals. It lies in how Cruz Azul answer when there is nothing left to lean on but themselves. I hear the news from the meeting room, but I write in the voice of the stand.

Estadio Banorte will give an answer. And I will be there, in my own way, listening to the stand before I read the scoreboard.