Bomba's Hat-trick, Necaxa's Shadow: Where the Liga MX 'Curse' Stops and the Ledger Begins

When the second goal went in at Aguascalientes, the first thing I wrote in my notebook was not a goal count — it was a minutes count. Henry Martín, the striker everyone in Mexican football calls 'Bomba', scored a hat-trick, América beat Necaxa 2-4, and within minutes the old joke resurfaced on social media: the club that concedes a Bomba hat-trick eventually disappears from the top division. Necaxa, apparently, is the 'most recent victim'.

Before writing a word, I made a decision. I would not write about a curse. I would write about a process. Twenty-six years in this trade have taught me one thing: memes travel fast, but a meme has never once decoded a football match.

You cannot have this conversation without the structure of Liga MX. Mexico's top division runs in two halves — Apertura and Clausura. Each half ends with the Liguilla, an eight-team playoff that crowns the champion from the regular season's best sides. In Apertura 2026, through ten matchdays, América's captain Martín has started all eight of his appearances, logging 659 minutes and six goals. Those four numbers are today's real story. The rest is entertainment.

Let me derive a figure the original report never carries. 659 minutes ÷ 90 = 7.32 full-match equivalents; 6 ÷ 7.32 = 0.82 goals per 90. For the first-choice striker of a top-half Liga MX side, that rate is genuinely strong. But an average of 82.4 minutes per match means coach Guillermo Almada almost never takes him off — he is, in effect, undroppable. Eight starts in eight games, with no trace of an early substitution. This is where the first misreading hides: people see a hat-trick and say 'he's in form', when six goals in eight matches is far more measured, far quieter.

But a number is one thing and a role is another. The first thing I learned in the half-space was how little the ball knows. The ball does not know who is creating space behind it, who is dragging the defensive line, who is pinning two defenders on the far side. Miguel Borja also scored in this match. That single fact matters enormously, because it proves América is not dependent solely on Martín's goals — the attacking load is shared. Where a captain-striker is the only route to goal, one injury collapses the whole structure. At América that risk is, for now, contained.

Something still nags at me. A 2-4 win means conceding twice. Not four-to-nil — two-to-four. When you score four but concede two, the match is usually not a controlled low block; it is a transition game. Open, running, attack-counterattack. This is inference only, because the source carries no xG, shot-quality or pressing data. But the scoreline testifies on its own: questions about América's defensive stability remain, quietly buried under the light of a hat-trick.

Now, the 'curse'. The pattern rests on three hat-tricks. Three. At a sample that small, anything can be called a pattern. The original report concedes as much — it calls the sequence a 'statistical coincidence'. And here is my second objection: in the modern era, Liga MX has effectively suspended promotion and relegation. Which means 'leaving the top division' is not a routine annual event. So by what route did those three clubs leave? Relegation? Franchise relocation? Financial dissolution? When three different mechanisms hide under one label, that is not a curse — that is apophenia, the game of matching patterns after the fact. I will not print that claim without verification; my notebook will not let me.

The real structural question sits elsewhere. Martín was born in 2026; within Apertura 2026 he is roughly 33 or 34. For a forward, that is the decline phase. And he is playing 82 minutes a match, starting all eight. Put those two facts together and the risk is plain: a 0.82 goals-per-90 rate is excellent today, but the age curve and the minutes load pull in the same direction, and there is no evidence of rotation. Borja's presence is a comfort, but it is a buffer, not a solution.

I do not chase momentum; I map the rooms it runs through. The rooms in this match say: América can attack, leaks in defence, and leans on a captain at the far end of his career. The curse story explains none of those rooms.

So what do I watch next? Over the coming matches I will count two things, not goals. One: how many minutes Martín plays — if he starts being withdrawn before the 70th, I will know the coach is reading the age curve too. Two: rolling xG versus actual goals — if conversion drifts back toward the mean, the hat-trick was variance, not trend. And a third thread: the chase for the club's all-time top-scorer record. That is the most durable strand in this whole narrative, not the curse.

To those who insist a Bomba hat-trick means a rival's downfall, one question: if the pattern were truly a rule, who is the next victim, and in which season? When the answer arrives, I will check both the tape and the table. Because I have learned this many times over — it is not the story that speaks last. It is the ledger.