It should be a surreal scene, indeed, for the lads from Stockholm — playing in balmy temperatures in the dead of winter… playing Mexico in the United States… playing Mexico in a city where it has lost exactly once in 15 matches… playing in front of 40,000 rabid Mexican fans who sing the national anthem so loudly that it drowns out the music.

…Mexico soccer fans aren’t big on advance sales.

As of last night, sales were in the low 20,000s for a venue that can seat about 42,000 for soccer. And most U.S. sporting events will draw a walk-up ticket-buying crowd of a couple thousand, if that.

Not with the Mexican national team. The smallest walk-up crowd that local promoter Paul Mendes can remember for a Mexico game in San Diego is 9,000. Some were in the 15,000 drange. One year, Mendes says they sold 25,000 tickets in the 36 hours before kickoff.

“It’s cultural, and it’s very hard to change that,” said Alejandro Taraciuk, the director of international business for Soccer United Marketing, which owns the rights to Mexican national team games in the States. “The one thing Mexico fans want to see before they purchase tickets is that the ‘real’ players are coming, not a B team or a youth team. Once they see that the real players are coming, they start buying tickets in big numbers.”

A big marketing tool for promoters, then, is the images of Jared Borgetti and Pavel Pardo and the rest of El Tri’s regulars getting off the plane at Lindbergh Field last night on the evening news.

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