No More Gatekeeper at the Border: Andres Fassi and the Day He Left FC Juarez Amid a Zero-Point Storm

Andres Fassi folded his notebook closed on an October afternoon, after his team left the pitch empty-handed. I was not there in Ciudad Juarez that night. But I know that feeling — the feeling when a man puts down his pen after three years of gripping something tight, and realizes his hand has grown tired without anyone noticing. My notebook still holds a few drops of Moscow tears, and today it has a new line. That line is about an Argentine man, a border city, and a team called Bravos — the brave ones — yet sitting at the bottom of the table with not a single point from eight matches. This story does not begin with a scoreline. It begins with a short statement published earlier this month, when the FC Juarez board officially confirmed that they and Andres Fassi had reached a "mutual agreement" to end his role as sporting president. Those two words — mutual agreement — have always been, to me, the most beautiful and the saddest words in the language of football. Beautiful because they preserve dignity for both sides. Sad because they always appear after a season in which people have run out of ways to name the problem. In an emotional farewell statement, Fassi thanked the club's two owners — Ms. Alejandra de la Vega and Mr. Paul Foster — and the entire Juarez fan base. He emphasized a bond of more than three decades with the border city. That is a detail I want to linger on, because it tells us this is not a man who was just fired. This is a man who had to choose between two parallel lives of his own. Thirty years. Three decades is as long as a player's entire career, as long as the youth of a loyal supporter. And across those three decades, Andres Fassi became a figure Mexican football cannot ignore whenever people talk about projects built from the ground up. He belongs to that generation of executives who believe a club can be raised from the smallest bricks — from academies, from youth systems, from fourteen-year-old children who have never stepped outside the desert. For nearly three years leading the sporting project at FC Juarez, Fassi focused on three pillars: institutional restructuring, the development of youth academies (fuerzas basicas in Mexican football terms), and strengthening talent recruitment along the border region and in the Mexican-American market. This is a perfectly sound vision for a club with limited resources. In theory, it could even be considered a model example worth learning from. But football is never a theoretical subject. Football is an experimental one. And the result of the experiment at Juarez, after nearly a thousand days, is a single short line: Bravos reached the playoffs exactly once. They call me a dreamer. But the ball has never hidden anything from me. And what the ball is whispering to me now, as I write this piece with the waterproof pencil I always carry, is a truth no one wants to say aloud: a three-year project that reaches the playoffs only once, and is currently bottom of the table with zero points from eight matches, is no longer a project. It has become a long skid across the sand, and the only choice is whether one has the courage to stand up. I have witnessed such skids before. In 2026, in Moscow, I wrote down the words of a seventy-year-old Croatian man after Modric left the pitch in the 101st minute: "The kid runs 12km every match, but tonight he ran with 20 years of exile." Rain blurred that sentence, but I can still read it to this day. And I realized that football, at its deepest level, is never a story about numbers. It is a story about people who have to stand up after falling. Standing in Ciudad Juarez right now, one could tell the story in two ways. The first is the story of a bottom-placed team, an unfinished project, an executive leaving before the ship docks. The second is the story of a border city, a paradoxical football culture, and a man forced to choose between two continents. I choose the second way, because the first can be told by anyone, while the second can only be understood by those who have sat in empty stands. On an empty pitch at night, I hear the ball breathe. And tonight, that breath echoes from a stadium on the border, where empty seats stretch out and a scoreboard displays a zero like an unwanted rest note. Fassi, in his farewell statement, explained his reasons: he has too many professional responsibilities in South America, plus a new phase he is about to begin at a Spanish club. Those responsibilities and commitments — including work in Argentina — prevent him from maintaining the constant presence the border club demands. This is a perfectly believable explanation. But it is also an explanation that anyone who has followed football long enough will immediately recognize for the small gap inside it: if Fassi truly has too many responsibilities in South America and Spain, why did he only decide to leave when the team was bottom of the table with zero points? That question is not meant as an accusation. It is simply how I — a man who has spent five chapters writing about skids — reread a story everyone wants to package neatly. When the FC Juarez board announced the news, they spoke of a "mutual agreement". Fassi spoke of a "new phase". And all of us, the readers, spoke of a "departure". No one spoke of a "failure". That is football's courtesy. A courtesy I love, because it allows people to keep their dignity. But also a courtesy I fear, because it can conceal the most important thing. And what is the most important thing here? The current state of FC Juarez: the club sits bottom of the overall table, having earned no points in eight matches played. That number, to anyone who understands even a little about Liga MX, carries a terrible message. Liga MX operates on a 17-round regular season, and only the top teams qualify for the Liguilla. That means to reach the playoffs, a club must finish in the upper half of the table. For FC Juarez right now, that position is unimaginably distant. I have spent years observing how clubs handle crises. From my experience watching matches, I can say there are two kinds of crisis in football. The first is a results crisis — the team plays well but loses to bad luck, to referees, to unavoidable moments. The second is a structural crisis — the team loses because it was never built correctly in the first place. FC Juarez, with zero points from eight matches, is in the second kind. Eight matches is a sample large enough to rule out luck. This is not a run of bad days. It is a confession never written into words. Zero points from eight matches means the club's operating system is broken in a way no single win can repair. And this is where I must speak of something not many want to hear: Fassi's project, though built on correct ideas, failed to convert into on-field results. I do not say this to criticize. I say it to document, because my mission is documentation — even of things that break my heart as I write them. A three-year project, reaching the playoffs only once. A team currently bottom of the table. A sporting president leaving amid the storm. Placed side by side, those three events form an image that can only be called by two words: unfinished. But "unfinished" does not mean "wrong". And this is where I want you to walk with me a little deeper. Fassi's vision — restructuring the academy, developing fuerzas basicas, tapping the Mexican-American market — is a vision any European football strategist would nod at approvingly. On paper, that is how a small club creates long-term competitive advantage. On paper, that is how one escapes the cycle of buying mediocre players at inflated prices. But on paper, a desert can also become an oasis. The problem is time. Mexican football does not give clubs much time. Liga MX is one of the most unforgiving leagues in the world when it comes to results pressure. The cociente system — average points per game across multiple seasons to determine relegation — is both a shield and a blade. It protects clubs with stable histories, but it can also weigh heavily on clubs trying to build from zero. For FC Juarez, a club founded in 2026 and promoted to Liga MX in 2026, that shield is still thin. And when the team sits bottom with zero points, the blade becomes more visible than ever. I have spent years sitting in empty stands, listening to the ball breathe, writing down what numbers never say. And what I learned from those silences is this: a project needs not just to be right, it also needs to survive. A project that is right but dies young is a failed project — however beautiful its ideas. Andres Fassi likely understood that very well. That is why, when he spoke of "responsibilities in South America" and a "new phase in Spain", I heard something more than a work schedule. I heard a calculated withdrawal. I heard a man who knows the ship he is rowing will not reach port within the time he can stay. But to be fair to Fassi, I must add this: there are things a sporting president cannot control. Results on the pitch belong to the coach and the players. Financial resources belong to the owners. And fan patience is a variable no one can program. For a club like FC Juarez, situated in a border city of Chihuahua state, those variables are even more complex. Ciudad Juarez is not an easy city to live in. It sits beside El Paso, Texas, and for years was known as one of the most socially unstable cities in Mexico. Building a competitive football club here is not just a financial equation. It is an equation of identity, of community, of trust. And trust, when placed under a zero from eight matches, drains quickly. The scoreboard cannot reflect the heart, and football writes poetry in those places. It writes poetry in emptying stands, in fans' messages sent to the board at two in the morning, in hugs in the dressing room after the eighth defeat. It writes poetry where data analysts never set foot. That is why I always carry a notebook. Because the best stories never come from the press room. They come from the stands, from bus stations, from small cafes outside stadiums. And the story of Fassi, with all its numbers and statements, is one such story. But people say I am a dreamer. They said it when I called Hulk's shot off the post "the rest note of a symphony". They said it when I spent twelve minutes commenting on the dance of misplaced passes in the Guangzhou Evergrande vs Shanghai SIPG match. But I have always believed that precisely in the places people call meaningless, football truly speaks. And in Ciudad Juarez right now, football is speaking through a zero. There is one detail in Fassi's farewell statement I do not want to skip. He said he will remain as strategic advisor and institutional counselor to the De la Vega family. That is a hugely important detail, and one I think was underrated in the first news reports. Why? Because it shows that Fassi and the De la Vega family did not end their relationship the ordinary way. They did not break up. They merely changed the form of their companionship. In the football world, the so-called "strategic advisor" is often a soft chair for those who cannot — or should not — sit in an official seat. It is a way to retain influence without bearing responsibility for results. It is a courtesy with a high political charge. But it is also a sign that FC Juarez's owners — Ms. Alejandra de la Vega and Mr. Paul Foster — still place faith in the vision Fassi laid out, even if they cannot keep him in an operational seat. That says the problem is not the philosophy. The problem is execution. And here is where I want to offer an angle different from most reports you may have read. Public opinion tends to oversimplify executive departures. If the team loses, the executive is sacked. If the executive leaves, it is because of failure. That formula sounds very logical, and it is often correct. But it is not the only formula. Sometimes a man leaves not because he was driven out, but because he recognized he no longer had enough of the resource — time, focus, health — to continue. Sometimes a man leaves because another life awaits him elsewhere, and he must choose. Fassi spoke of "a new phase" about to begin at a Spanish club. He spoke of the "scale" of his responsibilities in Argentina. This is not the language of a man just pushed out. This is the language of a man actively stepping through a different door. Does that mean Fassi did not fail? No. That does not mean that. It only means the story is more complex than short news pieces usually present. A record of reaching the playoffs only once in three years is a poor result. That is a fact that cannot be denied. But to judge it properly, we need to place it in the context of Liga MX and of a club like FC Juarez. Imagine being tasked to build a house on a piece of land nature never favored. You have a limited budget, an unclear deadline, and a crew you must train from scratch. You start building. You lay a solid foundation. You raise the first walls. But every time you are about to roof it, a storm blows in and tears down what you just finished. After three years, you have a solid foundation, unfinished walls, and a roof never completed. Will people judge you as a success or a failure? The answer depends on what they measure. If they measure by the roof, you failed. If they measure by the foundation, you may have left an important legacy for your successor. Fassi said he believes in the foundation he left. And in a recent interview, he voiced confidence that the established infrastructure will allow the club to grow in the future. This may be a self-defense. It may also be a truth. I am not in the boardroom, so I cannot know for sure. But I am in football, and I know some foundations take five years to bear fruit. I also know some foundations never bear fruit, however beautiful the ideas they were built from. What distinguishes the two is not the quality of the bricks. It is the patience of those who stay to wait for the fruit to ripen. And at FC Juarez, that patience is being measured by a zero from eight matches. So what happens next? There are three scenarios I see as viable. Scenario one: FC Juarez appoints a new sporting director, who inherits what Fassi left and tries to run it differently. This is the most structurally stable scenario, but also the riskiest in terms of time — because any delay in the appointment may cost the club the chance to turn things around in the winter transfer window. Scenario two: The board decides to tear down the old model and build a new one from scratch. This is the scenario that could bring radical change, but it also means what Fassi built in three years is thrown away entirely. In a club sitting bottom of the table, tearing down to rebuild is a dangerous gamble. Scenario three: The board decides to change the coach and keep the existing structure, hoping a fresh breeze on the bench is enough to make a difference. This is the most common scenario in football, and also the one that fails most often, because it does not address the root problem. I do not know which scenario the FC Juarez board will choose. But I know that in any scenario, time is their greatest enemy. In football, everything can change in a single match. A goal in the 90th minute can turn a failed season into a historic one. A defeat in the 94th minute can cost a coach his job. But there is one thing football cannot change in a single match: the structure of a club. The quality of its academy, the stability of its finances, the consistency of its philosophy. Those things need time to build and time to fix. And if there is one lesson I can draw from more than fifty years of watching football, it is this: the most successful clubs are not those with the best ideas. They are those with the ability to sustain their ideas the longest. Ajax took years to build its academy. Barcelona took decades to develop La Masia. Bayern Munich took a century to become Bayern Munich. There is no shortcut. So why do we expect FC Juarez to complete a three-year project within three years? The simple answer: because Mexican football does not give them more time. Because the cociente system does not distinguish between a club building and a club collapsing. Because fans have waited too long, and they are tired. That is the tragedy of a correct project carried out in an unsuitable environment. And that is also the tragedy of men like Fassi — men who believe they can change a system, only to realize the system is changing them. Sixty-nine years old, I still believe a beautiful pass is a love letter. And I still believe the most beautiful projects — even when they fail — deserve to be recorded in the notebooks of people like me. Because if we record only victories, we will miss half of football's story. And that missed half — the story of skids, of tears, of nameless people — is precisely the most poetic part of this game. There is one thing I want to tell my readers, those who have followed me across five chapters of writing: do not read this news as an administrative notice. Do not read it as a line saying "Club X announces termination of contract with Mr. Y". Read it as a chapter in the long novel of a border city, a team named the brave, and an Argentine man forced to choose between two lives. Andres Fassi came to FC Juarez when the club had just returned to Mexico's top flight. He was tasked with building a team from scratch, creating an academy system capable of developing future players. He spoke of young players from the border region, of the untapped potential of Mexican-American players, of building a football identity unique to a city like no other. He failed to convert that vision into on-field results. There is nothing to hide about that fact. But he left behind a question any club in a similar situation must answer: when do we stop measuring success by the table, and start measuring it by what we leave for those who come after? That is a question with no correct answer. That is a question each person, each club, each football culture must answer for itself. Some will say: success is measured only in trophies. Others will say: success is measured in legacy. I, a sixty-nine-year-old man with a notebook full of tears and a waterproof pencil, will say this: success is measured by what remains after you leave. If, after you leave, someone still speaks of your vision, still believes in what you planted, then you have not entirely failed. Fassi will not be remembered at FC Juarez as a winner. He will be remembered as a man who tried. And in football, trying is something to be treasured — even when it is not enough. I wonder whether somewhere in the Chihuahua desert tonight, someone is sitting in the empty stands of Estadio Olimpico Benito Juarez, listening to the ball breathe, thinking of the Argentine man who has just left. I wonder whether they realize this story does not end here. That it has only just begun a new chapter. And when that new chapter ends, another person will sit down, open a fresh notebook, and write down what happened. Because football never stops writing. It only stops being recorded when we stop listening. The information that Fassi is heading to a Spanish club is a notable detail in another way. It says his international network retains its value, regardless of the failures at Juarez. Capable executives are often valued highly in the market, even when their most recent record is poor. Football is a small industry, and reputation built over years often outlives a few losing seasons. I do not know what the Spanish project Fassi is about to join looks like. But I know any club willing to hand him a chance has seen something in his profile — something the numbers at Ciudad Juarez cannot fully display. Maybe it is his academy vision. Maybe it is his connections to South American football. Maybe it is simply respect for a man who has spent his career working in football. Whatever it is, it is a reminder that in football, a failure is never the whole story of a person. Modric wept, I wrote it down, and neither of us knew we were living through history. Perhaps Fassi also does not know that his three years in Ciudad Juarez — though not enough to create success — were also part of history. The history of an unfinished project. The history of a border city. The history of a team named the brave. And that history, though without an ending, still deserves to be written. Because not every story needs a complete ending to become a beautiful story. What I learned across five chapters of writing is this: football never ends. A project that ends in one place continues in another. A man who leaves will leave his mark on those who come after. A border city will remain, waiting for the next match, the next goal, the next story. And the fans of FC Juarez, those who have been patient through three turbulent years, those who saw Fassi's project begin without seeing it finish, will keep coming to the stadium on weekends. Because they love their club, not because it wins, but because it is theirs. That is the most beautiful thing in football — and the saddest. Loyalty needs no reason. It only needs time. And time, at FC Juarez, is still flowing. It flows through the skids, through the zeros, through the mutual agreements. It flows forward, always forward, never back. There is one thing I want to send to readers after they finish this piece. If you are an FC Juarez fan, and if you feel disappointed by what is happening to your club, remember you are not alone. Fans everywhere in the world have felt this. I have sat in the empty stands of a stadium with no match, and I know that feeling. It is the feeling of waiting. Of belief not yet rewarded. Of love not returned. But it is precisely in that feeling that football finds its beauty. Because the beauty of football is not in the moments of victory — it is in the moments we keep believing when everything is against us. And that is why I am still here, at sixty-nine, writing about a club in a city I have never set foot in, in a country I only know through matches on a screen. Because football is a common language. And in that language, every story — however small — deserves to be told. When the radio goes on air in the middle of the night, the pitch asleep, football knows how to wait. And anyone who tells me a three-year project reaching the playoffs only once is a complete failure, I will answer: wait another three years. Wait to see whether the seeds Fassi planted in Ciudad Juarez sprout. Wait to see whether the young players from the border region, the Mexican-American players he scouted, become pillars of the team in the future. If they do, then Fassi's project succeeded — even though he is not present to see it. And if they do not, it is still a lesson for those who come after. Football is always like that. One sows, another reaps. One sows, another forgets. And people like me, standing between two generations, have only one duty: to record what happened, so those who come later can read it back and understand that nothing is random. Every skid has a reason. Every zero has a story behind it. Every departure leaves a gap. The gap Andres Fassi leaves at FC Juarez, right now, has the shape of a notebook closing. But I believe another will soon be opened. Because in Ciudad Juarez, where the desert meets the border, where the brave are born, football has never stopped writing.