What Liga MX Promotion and Relegation Would Have Looked Like If It Had Never Been Frozen

Picture Gilberto Mora making his debut not in Liga MX, but in the Liga de Expansion. Sounds strange, doesn't it? But according to the coefficient table that would have stayed in effect without the freeze on promotion and relegation, Tijuana would have dropped to the second division in 2024. And with Tijuana would have gone its academy gem too. That's the kind of exercise six years without promotions or relegations leaves behind in Mexican soccer.

It all began on April 24, 2020, when the Mexican Football Federation decreed, in the middle of the pandemic, the suspension of promotion and relegation along with the immediate end of the tournaments underway. Ascenso MX was renamed Liga de Expansion, and future certifications were promised so that clubs in that division could move up with financial backing and proper infrastructure in place. Meanwhile, the old coefficient table kept running, though only to collect fines: the bottom three teams in each tournament paid up to 80 million pesos, money that went toward strengthening Expansion league projects. Six years later, the system was formally abolished, and the debate over bringing it back has already reached the Senate.

Aside from the Atlante case, which ended with the club buying the Mazatlan franchise, team changes in Liga MX have been frozen ever since. But if the coefficient had kept ruling, the list of relegations and promotions would look quite different from what actually happened.

The Ones Who Would Have Gone Down

The count starts in 2020 with a special case: Veracruz was disaffiliated before the pandemic brought everything to a halt, and the league dropped from 19 to 18 teams with no one promoted that year, since neither the Clausura 2020 nor a hypothetical Campeon de Campeones could be completed.

By 2021, relegation would have hit Atletico San Luis, with a coefficient of 0.9275 after the Guardianes 2021, below Atlas (1.0291) and FC Juarez (1.0874). A year later, in 2022, Juarez itself would have gone down with 0.9709, surpassed by Tijuana (1.0388) and Toluca (1.1650). In 2023 it was Queretaro's turn, with 0.9314 after piling up 95 points in 102 matches, just below Tijuana (0.9804) and Mazatlan (1.0000).

The relegation streak continued in 2024 with Tijuana, dragging a coefficient of 0.9706 after the Clausura 2024, slightly worse than Juarez (1.0000) and Mazatlan (1.0098). In 2025, fate caught up with Mazatlan, with 0.9118 after managing just 93 points in 102 matches, closely followed by Puebla (0.9314) and Atlas (1.0294). And in 2026, the worst coefficient of the entire decade belongs to Puebla, with 0.7647 after totaling only 78 points in 102 matches.

The Ones Who Would Have Gone Up

On the other side of the coin are the Expansion champions left without their reward. In 2021, Tepatitlan would have made the jump for the first time in its history after winning the Guardianes 2021 by beating Tampico Madero in the Campeon de Campeones, playing in a stadium with capacity for 12,500 spectators.

In 2022, Atlante would have gotten a head start of several years on its "real" return to the first division (the one it finally achieved by buying the Mazatlan franchise), after winning the Apertura 2021 and falling 5-4 on penalties to Morelia in the final, with the decisive goal scored by Brazilian Elbis. In 2023, with Tapatio out of the running for being a Chivas farm club, the spot would have come down to Celaya or Morelia, who were fighting it out for it.

Cancun FC, the project backed by businessman Jeff Luhnow, would have been the promoted team of 2024 after winning the Clausura and beating Atlante in the Campeon de Campeones. In 2025, once again because of the restriction on Tapatio, the ticket would have gone to Universidad de Guadalajara, which would have returned to the top flight for the first time since 2014 after beating its own farm club, Leones Negros, in the final. And to close things out, in 2026, Jaiba Brava de Tampico would have earned promotion after a final against Tepatitlan that ended 5-5 on aggregate and was decided 4-3 on penalties.

Six relegations, six promotions that never happened. An entire stretch of recent Mexican soccer history that exists only in the numbers of a table that stopped mattering.