Club de Futbol Cruz Azul S.A. de C.V., commonly referred to as Cruz Azul, is a professional football club based in Mexico City. The club competes in Liga MX, the top division of Mexican football. Founded in 1927 in Jasso, Hidalgo, by workers of the Cooperativa La Cruz Azul, as Club Deportivo, Social y Cultural Cruz Azul, A.C., the club relocated to Mexico City in 1971. It was renamed Cruz Azul Fútbol Club, A.C. in 2012, before adopting its current name in 2022. The team plays its home matches at Estadio Azteca, one of the largest stadiums in the world.
Domestically, the club has won ten league titles, four Copa MX, four Campeón de Campeones, and holds the joint-record with one Supercopa de la Liga MX and one Supercopa MX. In international competitions, with seven titles, the club holds the joint-record for the most successful club in the history of the CONCACAF Champions Cup/Champions League. Cruz Azul also holds numerous distinctions, including being the club with the most league runner-up finishes (12), and the first team from CONCACAF to reach the final of the Copa Libertadores. In addition, the club achieved a continental treble in the 1968–69 season by winning the Primera División, Copa México and CONCACAF Champions' Cup, becoming the first CONCACAF club and third worldwide to accomplish this feat, and later the first club worldwide—and one of only five—to have won the continental treble twice.
Cruz Azul's golden era came under manager Raúl Cárdenas, who led a three-peat in the CONCACAF Champions' Cup between 1969 and 1971 as the club established itself as a dominant force in Mexican football and earned its La Máquina (The Machine) nickname for its relentless scoring output during this period; Ignacio Trelles added back-to-back league titles at the turn of the 1980s, and between them the two managers delivered a combined seven league titles through the 1960s and 1970s. Juan Reynoso—a defender in the team's 1997 league title-winning squad—later managed the club to a ninth league title in 2021, its first during the Liga MX era, ending a 23-year wait for the domestic title. Joel Huiqui then guided Cruz Azul to a tenth league title in 2026.
In 2026, Cruz Azul was named by the International Federation of Football History & Statistics as the 71st-best club in the world and the highest-ranked club in CONCACAF for the 2025 calendar year. Cruz Azul maintains a long-standing rivalry with América, a fixture commonly known as the Clásico Joven. According to several polls, it is the third-most popular team in Mexico, behind only América and Guadalajara. Within the Mexico City metropolitan area, it is generally regarded as the second-most supported club, behind América and ahead of Pumas UNAM. Cruz Azul is also one of seven Mexican clubs that have never been relegated. Together, these clubs are considered the Big Four of Mexican football.
History 1927–1961: Formation and amateur years
Cruz Azul originated at the cement works of the Compañía Manufacturera de Cemento Portland La Cruz Azul in Jasso, Hidalgo, the predecessor of Cooperativa La Cruz Azul. The works dated to 1881, when the British businessman Henry Gibbon established a lime factory at the site. In 1925, the company planned to form a baseball team, reflecting the sport's popularity in the area. Carlos Garcés López, a dentist employed by the company, argued for football instead. A former América player, he had been part of Mexico's squad in the national team's first official matches in 1923 and was in the squad for the 1928 Olympics. After sustained lobbying, the company held a referendum on 22 March 1927 in which football was chosen. A football pitch replaced the baseball diamond, and the team was formally established on 22 May 1927, with Garcés López as its first manager. In its early years, the team played regional tournaments in which all of its players were company workers.
In 1931, during the Great Depression, falling demand for cement pushed the company toward bankruptcy, and on 1 March 1931 it was sold to the cement firm La Tolteca. A group of 192 workers organised and sued the company's executives to stop the transfer of the property, which was scheduled for 15 October 1931. The Hidalgo state government ruled in the workers' favour, and they took control of the plant on 2 November 1931, agreeing to repay its cost over ten years. On 21 May 1932, the governor of Hidalgo, Bartolomé Vargas Lugo, decreed the 192 workers collective owners of the plant by expropriation, and on 29 January 1934 the company was reconstituted as the Cooperativa Manufacturera de Cemento Portland La Cruz Azul, S.C.L. When the debt was settled in 1941, the club organised a celebratory match against Real España, which ended 0–0. Commentators have linked the club's origins in a workers' cooperative to its working-class image.
The team won the Hidalgo amateur league title repeatedly between 1932 and 1943, and on eight occasions represented the state in national amateur tournaments. From the mid-1930s to the late 1940s, it regularly travelled to Mexico City to play the reserve teams of Atlante, Necaxa, Marte and Real España at Parque Necaxa. By 1937, the club had a considerable following in both Hidalgo and Mexico City. Guillermo Álvarez Macías, later the head of the cooperative, played as a midfielder for the team in this period.
On 10 December 1953, the cooperative's general assembly put Álvarez Macías in charge of the company. Employed by the company since childhood, he had begun as an automotive mechanic and spent more than two decades rising through its ranks. He planned to turn the cooperative's settlement into a functioning town, with the aim of modernising it and raising the standard of living of workers and their families. He invested in cultural and recreational and in the football club, whose proceeds were used to improve the worker-players' living conditions.
In 1958, club captain Luis Velázquez Hernández represented the club before the Mexican Football Federation in a bid for official membership. In Mexico City he met Paulino Sánchez, who had ties to prominent football figures, and the two met Joaquín Soria Terrazas and Ignacio Trelles to discuss admitting the club. Sánchez argued in the club's favour, citing its record in amateur and reserve tournaments; Álvarez Macías, who believed the club was not ready for professional football, was displeased by the move.
To prepare for membership, Sánchez became the club's head manager. Federation rules required member clubs to have a reserve team, so Cruz Azul bought Lafayette, a financially troubled club from Colonia Moctezuma, in a deal completed in 1960. Plans for a stadium meeting federation standards were drawn up in 1960, and Estadio 10 de Diciembre was built between 1961 and 1963.
Although it did not yet hold federation membership, the club was invited to enter the 1960–61 Copa de la Segunda División de México, a federation-sanctioned competition. Its first match, on 2 April 1961 in Jasso, was a 2–1 win over Zamora; the return leg on 9 April ended in a 3–3 draw. Cruz Azul then beat Querétaro 1–0 on aggregate before losing to Pumas UNAM. The performance led the federation to grant the club official registration as a professional side.
1961–1968: Transition to professionalism and promotion Cruz Azul was officially registered to compete in Mexico's second-tier professional league for the 1961–62 season. Around this time, federation rules barring the use of company names in club titles led Álvarez Macías to request the renaming of the town of Jasso, Hidalgo, to Ciudad Cooperativa Cruz Azul, allowing the club to keep the name "Cruz Azul" as a reference to a place rather than a commercial brand.
The Hungarian coach Jorge Marik, who had previously managed Atlas and Atlante, took charge in 1961. In its first two professional seasons, the club finished fourth of 16 in the 1961–62 season and fifth of 16 in the 1962–63 season. Under Marik, Cruz Azul won the 1963–64 Segunda División title, finishing with 19 wins, seven draws and four losses from 30 matches for 45 points, and secured direct promotion to the Primera División with a 7–1 win over Zamora on 19 January 1964.
Following promotion, Estadio 10 de Diciembre was renovated from 6 March 1964, with its wooden stands and dressing rooms rebuilt to meet top-flight regulations. Cruz Azul made its Primera División debut on 6 June 1964, losing 4–1 away to Monterrey, and recorded its first top-flight win two matchdays later, 3–2 away to Oro on 21 June 1964. The club finished its debut 1964–65 season in eighth place, with ten wins, nine draws and 11 losses. Marik departed after a weaker 1965–66 campaign, in which the team finished 13th of 16 clubs. Walter Ormeño managed the side for three matches before Raúl Cárdenas was appointed on 20 October 1966, becoming the club's first Mexican head coach in the top flight.
1968–1980: Dominant era and birth of La Máquina Under Cárdenas, Cruz Azul won its first league title in the 1968–69 season, finishing top of the table on points with 18 wins, eight draws and four losses. The same season, the club also won its first Copa México and first CONCACAF Champions' Cup, a continental treble that made Cruz Azul the first club in Mexico and the CONCACAF region to win all three competitions within five years of reaching the top flight. Because the league and cup were won in the same season, Cruz Azul was also automatically awarded the Campeón de Campeones title, giving the club four major titles in a single calendar year—a feat no other Mexican club has achieved.
In the 1969–70 season, Cruz Azul finished second behind Guadalajara, level with Veracruz on 39 points; the runner-up place was decided by a play-off, which Cruz Azul won on penalties at Estadio Azteca on 4 January 1970. Due to Mexico hosting the 1970 FIFA World Cup, the following tournament was held under a separate format and name, México 1970, contested in two phases either side of the World Cup; Cruz Azul won it to claim a second league title. On 15 December that year, the club was also awarded the 1970 CONCACAF Champions' Cup after Saprissa and Transvaal withdrew from the tournament's second phase.
In 1971, Cruz Azul relocated from Ciudad Cooperativa Cruz Azul to Mexico City, moving into Estadio Azteca after outgrowing Estadio 10 de Diciembre. Cruz Azul won a third consecutive CONCACAF title in the 1971 edition, whose final was played at the new stadium on 19 April 1972 and won 5–1, with two goals each from and Octavio Muciño and one from Fernando Bustos, and went on to finish runners-up to Nacional of Uruguay in the 1971 Copa Interamericana. On 21 December 1971, Cruz Azul signed Argentine goalkeeper Miguel Marín from Vélez Sarsfield for $30,000; he went on to anchor the team for a decade. During this period, the team gained the nickname La Máquina ("The Machine"), in reference to the consistency of its results and playing style. Cruz Azul won three consecutive league titles between 1971 and 1974. In the 1971–72 final, Cruz Azul beat América 4–1 at Estadio Azteca; in 1972–73 it defeated León over a three-match final; and in 1973–74 it beat Atlético Español to complete the run, a result that also secured that season's Campeón de Campeones title.