Cruz Azul U21

On 30 June 2021, Cruz Azul sent out a communiqué that read nothing like a press release about a match. It announced a reorganisation of the club's youth categories, grouped under a name the club still uses for all of them: Fuerzas Básicas. The Sub-21 side sits inside that structure rather than standing apart from it — it plays in the Liga MX U21 competition, posts under the handle @AzulBasicas, and exists, above all, as the last stop before a player is handed a shirt in the first team.

That first team is the one the cement business built. Cruz Azul began on 22 May 1927 as an amateur side fielded by the Cemento Cruz Azul company, first based in Jasso, in the state of Hidalgo, before the club moved to Mexico City. It has played its home matches since at the Estadio Azteca, a ground with room for 87,523. The colours have stayed sky blue and white throughout, which is where the nickname Los Celestes comes from.

The senior side's record gives the academy something concrete to aim at: ten Mexican league titles, the most recent coming in the Clausura 2026, and a CONCACAF haul of seven continental titles, a mark no other club in the region has matched. On the domestic weekends when Cruz Azul faces Club América in the Clásico Joven, or crosses the city to meet UNAM Pumas in the Clásico Capitalino, it is that first-team badge the Sub-21 squad is being groomed to wear.

What the 2021 reshuffle changed, in practical terms, was how directly that pipeline ran — fewer detours, a clearer line from the academy categories into the group that still carries the name of a cement company from Hidalgo.