Teams across the Liga de Expansión used the first minutes of the league season to protest the FMF.

Players from Correcaminos UAT, Mineros de Zacatecas, Leones Negros, Tlaxcala, and other clubs passed the ball around in their own halves without attacking. Leones Negros later took a knee to start a match against Piratas before being forced to play by the referee.

Club Atlético La Paz took an even more direct protest in a match against Cruz Azul Hidalgo (a Cruz Azul reserve team who play in the Liga de Expansión) by wearing t-shirts that provocatively asked “¿Te acuerdas?” (“Do you remember?”) with the names of several Liga MX teams and the year that they were promoted to the top flight.

Players also held a banner pre-match, stating “Without promotion there is no pyramid, there is division.”

Executives from La Paz and other clubs have also taken a stand. The club’s president, Samuel Hernández, said in an interview with El Sudcaliforniano that:

“I believe the message being sent is the wrong one because it is limiting the states, the citizens, the fans, and the children who weren’t born in cities where there is professional or top-flight soccer.

As a result, they’re going to be destined or labeled as belonging to another city because they don’t have that opportunity for growth.

I believe that’s the unfair message. And the other message that, in my opinion, we need to handle very carefully is: What message about the value of hard work are we sending?

Because sporting merit is the most important merit in sports—the very reason sports were created.”

Hernández is exactly right. Without promotion and relegation, there is no meritocracy and without a meritocracy there is no point to sport. Anything below the first division is pointless and the first division itself is corrupted and meaningless without the threat of going down.

The fans recognize this, the players recognize this, and anyone concerned with preserving football heritage recognizes this.

The only people that don’t are the ones who care more about money than the football, which is unfortunately a lot of people in Mexican football — as exemplified by the convoluted old pro/rel system, Liga MX’s inclusion in the Leagues Cup with MLS, and the national team’s “partidos moleros” in the United States over the last two decades.

So, what happens now? Five clubs — Leones Negros, Club Atlético La Paz, Club Atlético Morelia, Cancún FC, and Mineros de Zacatecas — have appealed CAS’s decision from September with hopes of reinstating promotion and relegation in Mexico.

If this appeal fails, which it is likely to since the majority of Liga de Expansión clubs voted for the FMF’s new plan, nothing changes.

Promotion and relegation will continue to not exist in Mexico and fans outside Liga MX will never get the chance to see their team play against top-tier competition, unless their owner is one of the few willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on expansion fees. In other words, Liga MX will be another MLS — a closed shop where money rules everything, not merit.