The season begins in July and ends the following May. It's divided into two equal halves, two separate tournaments, entitled "La Apertura" (The Opening) and "La Clausura" (yes, you guessed it, The Closing!).
In the Apertura each of the Primera Division's 18 clubs plays each of its opponents once, either at home or away. The league table at the end of these 17 games determines the qualifiers for "La Liguilla" (The Little League), which is a two-legged knock out tournament for the top eight clubs to determine the tournament winner.
Seedings in the Liguilla are determined by league position, so the "Superlider" (the team which finished top of the league in the regular season) will play the team which finished eighth, second v. seventh, etc. In common with other football tournaments around the world the higher seeded team plays the second leg at home; a big difference however is that there is no away goals rule, in the event of a tie in the quarter finals and semi finals the higher seeded team goes through. There can therefore be no extra time or penalties in these two rounds. In the final, however, seeding counts for nothing and the tie must have an outright winner, with provision for possible extra time and penalties if required. There is still no away goals rule in the final.
The Apertura runs from mid July to mid December, after which there's a break of several weeks over Christmas and New Year before the Apertura starts. This was a big culture shock for me when I spent my first football free Christmas in Mexico!
Just after the Christmas decorations come down the Clausura begins. This follows an identical format to the Apertura, the one thing connecting the latter to the former is that the regular season fixtures of the first tournament are reversed for the second, and more or less in the same order. The whole thing comes to an end in May.
At the end of the season just one team is relegated to the second tier (the optimistically named "Liga de Ascenso", or The Promotion League). Rather than simply relegating the team with the worst record over the two tournaments the relegated team is the one with the lowest average points per game over the preceding three seasons. This means a team can have a disastrous season and still stay up, and conversely it is mathematically possible to win the tournament and be relegated, a bizarre scenario if you're used to the more straight forward league systems used in Europe. The promoted team is the winner of the play off between the winners of the Apertura and Clausura in the Liga de Ascenso. In 2011 the Xolos of Tijuana beat Irapuato over two legs to replace Necaxa in the Primera Division, the preceding year there'd been no need for a grand final due to Necaxa winning both tournaments.
All of this means that a highly successful side that reaches both finals will play a total of 46 games, whilst a team which reaches neither Liguilla will play only 34. There is no domestic cup competition: the Copa México was last played for in 1997, just a season after the present short tournament format was adopted.
Mexico does send representatives to two international club tournaments. The finalists of the Apertura and Clausura represent Mexico in the following season's CONCACAF Champions League, and Mexico sends three invitees to the South American Copa Libertadores, currently based on league position in the Apertura. Despite the dominance of Mexican clubs in the CONCACAF tournament it is taken as seriously as Arsene Wenger takes the League Cup in England. Similarly, Mexican clubs tend to field rather "experimental" line ups in the Libertadores, though this didn't stop what was basically Chivas de Guadalajara's under 21 team reaching the final in 2010.
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