San Antonio soccer fans get ready to scream gollllll. El Tri, the Mexican national soccer team, is coming to San Antonio's Alamodome on November 18 to face off against Paraguay's La Albirroja, leading up to the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
This will be the 22nd time these countries have played each other, with El Tri having the edge with 11 victories, 5 draws, and 5 defeats. But don't count Paraguay out; they won the most recent match in 2022, and they'd love nothing more than to spoil this Alamo City matchup.
Both El Tri and La Albirroja are already qualified for the World Cup, as the Mexican national team sits comfortably at No. 13 in the FIFA standings and Paraguay lingers at No. 43. Despite the gap between these two teams, the contest at the Alamodome will be an important match.
This is the seventh local appearance for Mexico's national team, but El Tri has not played in San Antonio since 2018. In their last outing, nearly 30,000 fans reportedly painted the Alamodome in a sea of green. Expect the same electric atmosphere (and maybe even louder) this time around.
The FIFA World Cup, the largest sporting event in the world, will be held in 16 host cities throughout Mexico, Canada, and the United States, June 11-July 29, 2026. There will be 16 Texas matches, spread out between AT&T Stadium in Arlington and Houston Stadium.
Doors open for the Mexico versus Paraguay match at 7 pm on November 18. Tickets go on sale at 10 am on September 22, but pricing info has not yet been released. In an Instagram post, the Alamodome says it will release a social media presale code at 8 am on Thursday, September 18.
Actor Jimmy Stewart, thanks to movies such as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, The Shop Around the Corner, and The Philadelphia Story, had the reputation early in his career as the everyman in Hollywood, someone to whom most audiences could relate. That became even more true when Stewart entered the military during World War II, a period that is explored in the new biopic, Jimmy.
Stewart (KJ Apa) was riding high in 1941, coming off his first (and only) Oscar win for The Philadelphia Story. As depicted in the film, his life is upended when he receives a military draft notice as the U.S. prepares for war. He’s determined to serve, but people like studio head Louis B. Mayer (Jason Alexander) try to talk him out of it. Already an experienced pilot, he eventually joins the war in Europe, flying the B-24 bomber.
Despite his celebrity status, Stewart requests to be treated the same as any other soldier, which means flying multiple missions over enemy territory. He moves up the ranks, becoming a leader tasked with, among other things, reporting the deaths of service members to their families. He also starts a friendship that develops into a romance with Lady Julia (Kara Killmer), giving him a distraction from the horrors of war.
Directed by Aaron Burns and written by Justin Strawhand, the film has the clear goal of being a hagiography for Stewart, showing all of his good qualities and few of his bad ones. In fact, the character of Stewart is harder on himself than the actual movie is, chastising himself over the deaths of fellow soldiers that he likely could not have prevented. The filmmakers go to great lengths to show how good and well-respected Stewart was, something that may well be true, but doesn’t make for great drama.
The bulk of the film features Stewart at war, following him and others as they fly multiple missions and commiserate over the price of combat. The sequences are fine, but the film’s budget does not appear to be high, and so the CGI needed to recreate the scenes is noticeably subpar. Because Burns and Strawhand usually keep to surface-level storytelling and don’t go deep on any character besides Stewart, his time at war is engaging but slight.
The film is bookended by Stewart and Frank Capra (Max Casella) making It’s a Wonderful Life, Stewart’s first film after coming back from war. It’s here that the movie becomes most interesting as Stewart, still affected by his war experience, struggles to bring the character of George Bailey to life. The behind-the-scenes look at the film-within-the-film and the recreations of its iconic scenes are catnip for anyone who knows/loves the Christmas classic.
Apa, best known for starring as Archie on the TV show Riverdale, does extremely well as Stewart. He nails Stewart’s quavering voice and the way he ambles about plays right into the actor’s established persona. Casella and Killmer get the most play in supporting roles, and each does solid work as characters trying to understand Stewart. Alexander, Sarah Drew as Hedda Hopper, and Rob Riggle as a colonel each go a little too big in their respective parts.
Jimmy is probably best watched as an approximation of the man Stewart was in the 1940s, not as something that’s completely true to life. The film elides or stretches the truth on multiple occasions, which is par for the course in biopics. It could have used some stronger storytelling to make Stewart feel like a real person, not merely a replica of the famous actor.
