In Mexico, soccer is played wherever space permits

MONTERREY, Mexico, June 9 (Reuters) - Across World Cup co-host Mexico, soccer pitches are laid out wherever communities can find the space. On the edges of towns, on highway underpasses, ‌and even in a volcano crater, spaces are cleared that allow the young and the ‌old to share in the dream of the beautiful game.

> In an impoverished neighborhood in Monterrey in northern Mexico, 14-year-old Humberto Guadalupe, ​called "Messi" by friends and family, spends his weekends on the community's only soccer field, surrounded by abandoned cars and dirt roads.

> Just like the legendary Argentine player who inspired his nickname, he dreams of becoming a professional player one day, encouraged by his grandmother. "One way or another, it's going to happen," he says. "Even when we ‌lose a match, we keep our heads ⁠up."

> To the south, in a rural district on the outskirts of Mexico City, families arrive by car, motorcycle, bicycle and on foot to watch matches at the "Field ⁠of the Gods," a soccer pitch inside the crater of the extinct Teoca Volcano.

> Mist moves between pine trees and fruit orchards that frame the pitch in the former crater, nearly 700 meters (2,300 ft) above the sprawling capital. ​Built ​by the community more than 60 years ago, it is used ​by amateur local teams on Sundays.

> In nearby Xochimilco, ‌soccer players ride in traditional "trajinera" wooden boats along canals and cross chinampas, the ancient agricultural plots or floating gardens that helped sustain the Aztec capital centuries ago.

> They are heading to play on some of Mexico City's last remaining natural grass pitches. Located inside a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the pitches are an important social hub, but their creation can be damaging to the area's ecology and habitat of the ‌endangered axolotl salamander, scientists say.

> Though separated by landscape and distance, ​these matches share the same rhythm: communities building spaces around ​soccer in places shaped by hardship, geography ​and memory.

> Reuters photographer Raquel Cunha spent some three months taking photos of amateur soccer ‌matches across Mexico City and beyond; she ​mostly worked on Sundays, when ​players are out in force. She selected most of her subjects by closely examining the city on map apps and then choosing a shortlist of 15 to photograph with a drone. Of ​these, she chose two in the ‌city plus one in the industrial north to also photograph on the ground, with contrasting ​environments: gritty Monterrey; a green, mountainous suburb; and a historic neighborhood of canals.

> (Reporting by ​Raquel Cunha and Cynthia Rodriguez, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien)