The Estadio Banorte Tunnel: The Glass, the Child, and the Scream After a 1-1 Draw

At the end of the Estadio Banorte tunnel there is a pane of glass. It is so transparent that people forget it exists, until a hand presses against it, a face leans in close, and a voice finds a gap to slip through. In the video that spread after the 1-1 draw between América and Monterrey, what made me pause longest was not the insults. It was a child. He stood by the glass, raised his hand, and mocked Guido Binini, the assistant to coach Matías Almeyda. The child performed the gesture perfectly. Where did he learn it, and how long did it take him? Football does not end at the whistle. I learned that very early, in the years I spent standing at the end of stadium corridors, watching what happens after the lights go out. The América and Monterrey match ended with one goal for each side, one point for each side, a result that sounds balanced and harmless. But that very balance created a strange emotional void: no one won to celebrate, no one lost to bow their head, and all that remained was frustration with nowhere to go. And at Estadio Banorte, that frustration found an outlet made of glass. For the visiting team, the tunnel leading to the locker room is a short but risky journey. I once stood in a similar place, at San Siro, on an October night in 2026, when a coach told me that women watch football with their hearts, not with a tactical eye. That night, a captain who had just arrived stood up, pulled me closer, and gave me forty minutes without recording. I understood then that the tunnel and the locker room are where human nature is most exposed, because there are no spectators there, no cameras, only people with people. At Estadio Banorte, they built a pane of glass to break that privacy. Spectators can see every drop of sweat, every frown, every bowed head. And the players, along with the coaching staff, must walk past it as if walking through an emotional fence. In the videos, a fan screams into Binini's face: "¡No pudiste, puto, no pudieron!" — meaning "You couldn't do it, you bastard, you all couldn't do it." It is a sentence that is meaningless in tactical terms. Monterrey did not lose. They took a point away from home, a result any coach would accept in a big match. But the man shouting was not talking about the result. He was talking about the feeling of being entitled to say something to famous people, of being entitled to touch a world he can normally only watch from above. The glass turns distance into artificial closeness, and artificial closeness turns admiration into a license to insult. What stands out is that the incident did not stop with one person. A child stepped up to the glass to make a mocking gesture. A woman pressed her face against the pane to make obscene signs toward the Monterrey staff. Many others joined in. Within seconds, a corridor leading to the locker room became a stage, where adults and children alike performed a play they did not realize they were performing. The child did not invent the mocking gesture. He copied it. And that is the part that made me stop: verbal violence is not a sudden outburst, it is a habit passed from one generation to the next, in silence, through small gestures. I do not write down what they say. I remember what they leave unsaid. In this case, what is memorable is not the insults that were shouted, but what was never said. No one from the stadium's organization intervened immediately. No one stood there to tell the child that his behavior was wrong. The glass was designed to protect, but in reality it protects only the body, not the dignity. This tunnel area has been the site of similar tensions before. The very panes of glass, built to separate, became the means of connection for those who want to insult from a safe distance. And this is the point I want to stress, as a professional note after many years of observation: the problem is not the fans, it is the architecture. A tunnel designed so that fans can press their faces to the glass and communicate with players is a tunnel designed for conflict. In many European stadiums, the players' area is separated by an enclosed corridor, with security staff and a physical buffer. At Estadio Banorte, that buffer has been replaced by a transparent pane of glass, which gives the organizers a sense of safety while giving those inside a sense of helplessness. When pressure has nowhere to go, it turns back and finds a name to pour itself onto. In this case, that name was Guido Binini. An assistant coach, a man who does not score, does not assist, does not commit fouls. He was simply the last one to walk out. And in football, the last one to walk out is often the one who takes the most. I have seen this repeat in many places: when a team disappoints, people do not attack the star who played badly, they attack the nearest person, the easiest to reach, the one without enough fame to be protected. The assistant coach sits in exactly that position, famous enough to be recognized, anonymous enough not to be protected. Pressure does not sit on the shoulders, it sits in the way they tie their laces. I have written this line many times, and each time it feels truer. The pressure of an away draw does not show up in the scoreline. It shows up in the pace of an assistant coach's steps on the way back to the locker room, in the way he bows his head, in whether he chooses to walk fast or slow, in whether he turns back to look at the glass. Those details do not appear on television. They only appear to someone who stands close enough, long enough, and quietly enough to observe. What I always wonder after events like this is what we are teaching the next generation. When a child stands in front of the glass and learns to mock an adult simply because that adult wears a different color shirt, he is not learning about football. He is learning about power, that in a certain moment he can say anything to anyone without consequence. And when the stadium's organizers do not intervene, when no punishment is handed down, when the incident is mentioned only as a video that goes viral and then fades into oblivion, that lesson is carved a little deeper once again. I stand at the end of the corridor and hear clearly the sigh of an era. That era is not the era of beautiful football or ugly football. It is the era of artificial closeness, when cameras, social media and transparent panes of glass make us believe we know a person, when in fact we only know their image. Binini was not a name most fans knew before that night. But after that night, he became a name, not because of his work, but because of a moment of being insulted. It is a small injustice, but small injustices repeated often enough build a culture. For Monterrey, this incident will soon be overshadowed by the next match. Football has a short memory, and that is both its curse and its salvation. But for the people who work behind the scenes — the assistants, the analysts, the physiotherapists — events like this leave a mark. They are not paid to endure insults. They are paid to prepare, to analyze, to keep the team running. When their work is reduced to a moment of humiliation, that is a loss the scoreline never records. So what will change? I do not believe in grand promises. I believe in small, procedural changes, the kind that can be measured. An enclosed corridor instead of a pane of glass. A security guard standing at the crossing point. A clear rule that anyone who behaves abusively in the tunnel area will be banned from the stadium for a set period. Such measures sound trivial, but it is invisible meticulousness that changes human behavior, not propaganda campaigns. Football has learned to protect players from physical injury through specific medical standards. It is time it learned to protect them from psychological injury through specific architectural standards. When the stadium is empty, I finally understand what applause really is. True applause is not the loudest shout, but the clapping that still echoes after the crowd has gone home. And at the end of the Estadio Banorte tunnel, after everyone has left, all that remains is a pane of glass. It is still there, transparent, silent, waiting for the next match. The question is not whether the incident will repeat, it will repeat, as long as the glass is there. The question is who will be the first to decide that a corridor leading to the locker room should be a corridor, not a stage.