Cruz Azul Lagunas

Samuel Espinosa scored 23 goals in a single season for Cruz Azul Lagunas, a return that pulled him straight into Cruz Azul's Sub-23 side, where he finished as top scorer of the Apertura 2024 before Mazatlán FC took him on loan into Liga MX for the Clausura 2025.

The town itself came first. La Cruz Azul cooperative built a cement plant in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and founded Lagunas around it in 1941, and the football club grew out of that company town as a feeder for the parent side in Mexico City. It has spent most of its life in the lower tiers, playing in the Tercera División, now the Liga TDP, since the 1990s, sky blue and white like the senior team it supplies.

Javier Aquino and Julio César Domínguez both passed through Lagunas on their way to the first team, proof the pipeline has run for years rather than starting with Espinosa. The 2025–26 season gave the club itself something rare to show for that work: a run to the Liga TDP Zone A final and promotion to the Liga Premier Serie B, the best result in its history. A pre-season friendly title, the Copa Cancún FC, followed, won 4–0 against Ejidatarios de Bonfil.

None of it happens in front of many people — Estadio Deportivo La Laguna holds about 2,000 — and there is no fixed rival, just the everyday friction of Oaxacan lower-league football against sides like Alebrijes de Oaxaca II. What Lagunas is known for is the players it lets go. Espinosa is the one they are pointing to now.