Javier Aquino and the Question Buried Under the Headline: Does Mexico's Second Division Lack Quality, or a Reason to Exist?

Press conference in Mexico. A microphone placed in front of Javier Aquino. He says something I doubt the interviewer fully measured the weight of.

"The Liga de Expansión at this moment does not have the level that the Liga de Ascenso had before."

Within hours it became a headline. The packaging was familiar: a veteran Liga MX player criticising the second division. Cut from context. Enough to spark controversy, enough for the front page.

I read the full interview twice. The first thing I did, as always, was separate what was cut from what was kept. Because the part cut away is the part worth discussing.

Aquino plays for Bravos, a Liga MX club. He spent roughly three years in the Liga de Ascenso — Mexico's former second division — before it was renamed Liga de Expansión MX and before promotion and relegation were suspended.

He did not say it to criticise. He said it to set a condition.

He made clear he supports promotion and relegation returning. But he wants it to return after the current level of Liga de Expansión clubs is examined seriously.

A man who wants a mechanism to return, but wants it to return with checks attached. That is not the position of someone dismissing the second division. It is a cautious position, and caution is far harder to sell to the public.

Context: a system with the valve shut

To read Aquino's words correctly, you need to know how Mexican football's structure changed over a decade.

Liga MX is the top flight. Below it sits Liga de Expansión MX — formerly Liga de Ascenso. Before 2026, the system ran on the global model: bottom of Liga MX relegated, second-division champion promoted, with a promotion play-off.

Then the valve was shut.

Promotion and relegation were suspended. No club goes up. No club goes down. Second-tier clubs keep playing — for youth development, for broadcast revenue, for local pride — but not for a promotion place.

Aquino recalled his own memory: he used to face Necaxa, Veracruz, players with Primera División experience. He says that happens far less now.

I trust this kind of observation more than aggregate statistics. A player who spent three years there remembers the faces of opponents, the quality of their squads. Not a number, but a trace — and a trace needs verification, not dismissal.

The problem is this: personal memory is not statistical proof. I will return to that point later, because it is where both sides of this debate are sinking into sand.

Core analysis: what is "level", and who measures it?

When a player says "there is no level", what is he talking about?

In football, the "level" of a league is a composite concept. It is not a number. It is a combination of at least five moving variables, and those five usually move together — or collapse together.

Variable one is average wage bill. This is the root variable. A league paying low wages will not retain players at their peak. In Mexico's second tier, with no promotion place available, owners have no economic reason to push wages up. Why spend more when the highest reward — a place in Liga MX — has been removed from the table?

Variable two is squad composition. When wages are low, squad structure shifts: fewer veterans with Primera División experience, more unproven youngsters, more short-term loans. This is precisely what Aquino observed: opponents with top-flight experience appear less often. He is not talking about pure football quality. He is talking about personnel profiles.

Variable three is competitive intensity. This is the variable analysts overlook, yet it is the most important for player development. A league with promotion and relegation carries pressure at both ends: leaders chasing promotion, bottom clubs fighting relegation. That pressure produces matches where every point has value. Without it, pressure vanishes. Final-round fixtures become administrative procedure rather than matches.

Variable four is broadcast and commercial value. A league with a story — promotion places, a relegation fight — commands higher rights fees. A league with no story, where the season ends without consequence, is harder to sell to broadcasters and sponsors.

Variable five is development time. Young players need a genuinely pressurised environment to mature. If the second tier has no pressure, they develop in a simulated environment — and when they reach the first team, they hit the gap between two levels of pressure.

These five variables form a self-reinforcing loop. No promotion means no investment incentive. No investment means low wages. Low wages mean fewer veterans. Fewer veterans mean low competitive intensity. Low intensity means low commercial value. Low value means even less investment incentive.

When promotion is removed from a system, it does not simply remove a place. It removes the financial engine for investing in quality.

That is what I think Aquino is saying without saying it. He says "level". He is describing the consequence of a structure.

A comparison with Japan — where I live and follow the game — makes this clearer.

J1, J2 and J3 operate with full promotion and relegation. But the more important point: to be promoted from J2 to J1, a club must meet licensing criteria. Not just win on the pitch. It needs a compliant stadium, sufficiently transparent finances, an academy structure, a commitment to financial stability.

Those criteria cut two ways. They protect the top flight from clubs that come up and collapse within two years because the foundations were absent. And they create a clear pathway for lower-division clubs: to go up, you must meet the standard — and that standard is defined in advance, not negotiated afterwards.

When Aquino says "the level of Liga de Expansión clubs must be analysed", I hear a similar logic: do not open the promotion valve before the criteria exist. Open it without criteria and promoted clubs ascend on debt and descend through collapse.

This is the key point: the real question in this debate is not whether promotion and relegation should return, but how to open the valve without bursting the pipe.

And this is where Aquino's "no level" claim gets misread. He is not using it to block change. He is using it to demand that change be done properly.

Notably, Aquino also states clearly who holds decision-making power: club owners and directors. Players only compete under existing rules. They do not write them. "There are many decisions above that could be changed for the good of Mexican football," he said.

Read carefully, that is not a complaint. It is a clear allocation of responsibility. Aquino is placing the issue on the correct desk — the desk of those who can change the competition format.

In my own work I have seen similar debates in other leagues. In Vietnam, arguments about clubs leaving V.League or seeking promotion tend to revolve around rights fees and commercial control, not on-pitch achievement. In Japan, when the J-League expanded, licensing criteria were strict enough that a J2 champion was denied promotion because its stadium did not comply. Local fans protested, but three years later that club completed its stadium and went up for good.

That lesson applies to Mexico. The promotion valve must come with a filter.

Contrarian angle: the blind spot sits on both sides

Now the part where both camps are sinking into sand.

The headline "the second division has no level" is a claim that cannot be verified with the data available at this stage. It is personal observation. Aquino played there, he is entitled to an opinion, and his opinion carries weight. But it cannot substitute for a statistical comparison — average wage bills in the Liga de Ascenso of 2026-2026 against Liga de Expansión of 2026-2026, the number of Primera División-experienced players per squad, the number of genuinely competitive final-round fixtures.

I write slowly because I have written wrongly before. And my mistakes usually came from trusting a good line without checking its source.

But there is another blind spot, and it sits on the opposite side.

Those demanding immediate promotion often merge two different questions into one: "is promotion and relegation good for Mexican football?" and "are second-division clubs ready to be promoted right now?" The answer to the first can be yes. The answer to the second can be no. Blending them is the fastest route to a bad decision.

In football, a promoted club without foundations does not only harm itself. It dilutes top-flight quality, hands another club a free relegation place, and drags the league's broadcast value down. A club that collapses two years into a Liga MX spell leaves a debt scar the league has to absorb.

A promotion place is not a purely sporting reward. It is a financial licence in disguise.

And this is where Aquino is right without saying it aloud: without financial criteria attached, reopening promotion and relegation could turn Liga de Expansión into a yo-yo factory — up then down, down then up, no club given time to stabilise a squad, build a structure, or build a stadium.

But if it stays closed, the cost is larger. A sealed second tier gradually loses its ability to retain players. The best young players find routes abroad earlier. Veterans seek leagues with competitive meaning. And the division loses its reason to exist beyond being a training ground for bigger clubs — a role that generates no revenue, no audience, and no national-team players at sufficient level.

That is the biggest blind spot: both camps are arguing about format while the real problem is financial structure.

Looking back ten years, I see this pattern repeat across smaller leagues. People fix the format — add play-offs, change the number of clubs, change the calendar — but never fix the revenue. Three years later, the old problem returns under a new name.

There is one detail I keep in mind when reading debates like this. In 2026, when the pandemic emptied stadiums, I worked in the data analysis department of a sports company in Nagoya. The local club had to cut 30% of its recruitment budget. A loan deal for a young Brazilian player collapsed at the last minute because the league organisers would not accept remote medical checks.

I wrote a 14-page report listing the Japanese league's financial regulations and comparing them with European clubs. The executive director used it to renegotiate with the Brazilian partner.

The lesson: in a crisis, process is not a burden. Process is the only thing that keeps a negotiation from collapsing. That holds for a loan deal in Nagoya, and it holds for a league format in Mexico.

The bottom line: without process, a sporting reform becomes a transfer of risk from one club to another, from one season to the next.

What comes next

If I had to bet on the next domino in this story, I would bet on something discussed less than the "level" headline: schedule and licensing conditions.

Because every promotion debate anywhere eventually settles on two technical questions. When do you open? And who do you open it for?

Aquino says he wants the system back. He says he wants it back the right way. The distance between those two statements is the distance between a headline and a policy.

And the question I leave with readers, which is the question I asked myself reading the interview again: if a veteran player who lived inside that system for three years says it has weakened — and says so to demand it be fixed rather than buried — then who exactly wants the status quo to hold?

A rumour only lives until the truth walks into the meeting room. But sometimes the thing that needs to walk into the room is not a rumour, but the right question, asked at the right time, by the right person.