by Jose Gabriel Martinez and Ricardo Montoya
GUADALAJARA, Mexico, June 20 (Xinhua) -- Roberto Guerrero still sounds surprised when he recalls the phone call that changed his life.
He had spent 15 years calling soccer matches on radio, from modest local fields to first-division games, when he was told he would travel to the 1966 World Cup in England.
"I almost fainted," he said with a laugh in an interview with Xinhua. For a young Mexican commentator at the time, covering a World Cup seemed like an impossible dream.
Six decades after that first tournament, the dream has become a career few can match.
At 90, Guerrero is experiencing the 2026 World Cup as the only Mexican journalist to have commented on 15 editions of the tournament, a record that places him among Latin America's longest-serving and most experienced sports broadcasters.
His story has unfolded alongside the evolution of soccer and the media. When he covered his first World Cup, broadcasts still reached Mexico hours late.
Images traveled from England to New York and then on to Mexico, where they were shown on videotape at night. Today, millions of fans watch matches live on mobile phones and digital platforms.
"The 1970 World Cup was truly sensational," Guerrero said, recalling the first World Cup hosted by Mexico. Only 16 teams took part, and Brazil, led by Pele, sparked a fascination that forever shaped the bond between Guadalajara, in the western Mexican state of Jalisco, and Brazilian soccer.
For Guerrero, the differences among the three World Cups held in Mexico - in 1970, 1986 and 2026 - also reflect the transformation of the country and its fans.
Mexico 1970 was a one-of-a-kind novelty, the first World Cup broadcast in color. Mexico 1986 came with a deeper soccer culture. The current tournament is being lived on a global scale, driven by technology, the sport's commercial expansion and fans who continue to see soccer as an expression of national identity.
"Football, which was born in England, took out naturalization papers in Mexico, and we feel it as something of our own, something Mexican," Guerrero said.
"It takes over every corner of Mexico. It is our sport par excellence, that is definitive. It is lived, it is felt. There is passion, attachment to one team, passion for another, arguments, and a very broad world of soccer journalism," he said.
Born in the western state of Michoacan in 1936, Guerrero came to sports journalism by accident. While working at a local radio station, he stepped in at the microphone to replace an absent commentator.
That unexpected opportunity launched a career that would lead him to share space with some of the sport's most emblematic figures, witness the brilliance of Pele and Argentina's Diego Armando Maradona, and become a reference point in Mexican soccer broadcasting.
For decades, his voice accompanied fans in Guadalajara as they followed clubs such as Chivas, Atlas and Leones Negros. But the World Cup became the central thread of a career built on discipline and consistency.
Now, as Mexico becomes the first country to host three World Cups, Guerrero is watching the tournament with special emotion.
He is the last surviving member of the group of Mexican journalists who covered the 1970 World Cup and the only one to have witnessed all three editions held on Mexican soil.
But he prefers to speak not of records, but of feelings. For him, covering a World Cup remains an incomparable privilege.
"It is a great honor, definitely, to be at a World Cup, commenting, narrating, living it, feeling it, appreciating it. Nothing can pay for that," he said.
At 90, Roberto Guerrero still watches soccer with the same fascination he had as a young broadcaster in 1966.
Among memories, anecdotes and new generations dreaming of following in his footsteps, he has held on to the conviction that has guided his professional life: soccer is more than a spectacle. It is a passion capable of bringing together stories, eras and entire generations. ■
