Atletico Hidalgo

Cristian Nasser had never scored a competitive goal for Atlético Pachuca's first team when Grupo Pachuca decided, in the summer of 2025, that the reserve side needed an identity of its own rather than a place in someone else's shadow. On June 24 the group announced the change, and on June 30 the team took the field as Atlético Hidalgo, a name Pachuca had already carried once, in the 1990s, and quietly retired.

That earlier club, founded in Pachuca in December 1996, went by the same nickname, Los Rojinegros, and reached a domestic final that same winter, losing to Tigres UANL. Two years later it was sold off and moved to Toluca, rebranded, and by 2015 it no longer existed. Nothing connects the two clubs beyond the name and the colours their supporters once wore.

The current side plays in brown and ivory instead, out of the Estadio Municipal Atitalaquía, a 3,000-seat ground in the town of Atitalaquía rather than in Pachuca itself. It is a reserve team with senior ambitions: within a year of the rename, Atlético Hidalgo were lifting a national title, beating Fundación Leones Naranjas 1-0 in the final of the Primera División of the Liga de Fútbol Profesional Mexicano. The league sits outside the structure recognised by the Mexican Football Federation, run instead in partnership with the American-based National Independent Soccer Association, so the trophy counts for less in the eyes of the federation than it does in the clubhouse at Atitalaquía.

What Atlético Hidalgo has not yet acquired, in barely a year of existence, is an opponent it is expected to hate. A club built from a reserve squad and dressed in someone else's cast-off name has had no time to make enemies of its own.