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.
Few people are strong enough to resist the lure of Girl Scout cookie season every year, with the cookies’ limited availability and unique flavors a strong incentive to indulge. But only the girls and their families who have sold the cookies know the joys and stresses of trying to get people to buy them, a process that is detailed in the new documentary, Cookie Queens.
The film by documentarian Alysa Nahmias uses the stories of four different girls to represent the nationwide ritual for the Girl Scouts. They include 12-year-old Olive in Charlotte, North Carolina, a longtime top seller; 8-year-old Shannon Elizabeth in El Paso, Texas, who wants to earn the reward of going to camp; 5-year-old Ara in San Diego, California, whose goal is modest compared to most other girls; and 9-year-old Nikki in Chino, California, who has to compete with her older sisters in the cookie-selling bonanza.
The girls represent a cross-section of both ages and backgrounds, with some girls coming from wealthy families and some girls dealing with more limited means. And how much money your family has makes a big difference, as not only does someone richer have more freedom with their time and supplies, but all scouts are required to reimburse the organization for every box they take in, regardless of whether they’re able to sell it or not.
That caveat makes the journeys of the four featured girls feel wildly different. It’s clear from the start that Olive and Nikki’s families don’t give a second thought to the personal economics of selling cookies, with each girl taking in thousands of boxes at the beginning of the six-week selling season. With both Olive and Nikki rightfully confident that they’ll have no problem offloading their supply, their stories turn to how selling is personally affecting them, with each trying to reconcile the fun of doing it with the pressure they feel from their family members.
Shannon Elizabeth’s story is more harrowing, as her parents feel a strong desire to help her accomplish her lofty goal, but worry that the cost might literally be too high for the family as a whole. More than once, the parents are shown fretting that they won’t have the money to pay back what they owe should they fall significantly short in their sales. Their selling approach, which includes walking through an empty swap meet and standing outside a chain restaurant at night, only adds to their stress.
The most fun story to watch is that of Ara, whose innocence is matched by her confidence. Her parents teach her how much money they’ll owe with her small goal of 55 boxes, but right away she takes on more responsibility than expected. She’s shown making sales pitches and tallying the total number of boxes she’s sold with little-to-no help from either her mom or dad. With her high voice, glasses, and a monitor on her arm to manage her diabetes, she becomes the cute and sympathetic part of the film.
There are times that the film starts to feel more than a little manipulative, however. While many of the moments documented come off as organic, some of them seem like Nahmias is actively guiding the participants in order to get a better story. This is especially evident with Shannon Elizabeth and her family, whose early struggles turn into a miraculous feel-good story by the end, a turnaround that seems implausible at best. Everything with them might have been aboveboard, but Nahmias and her team edit the family’s journey in a way that pushes a bit too hard for emotion.
Cookie Queens, which was produced by a company owned by Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, helps to give insight into the business of selling Girl Scout cookies for those who’ve only been on the purchasing end of the transaction. The dedication of each girl toward selling their allotted supply proves fun and interesting, even if the filmmaker tries to gild the lily on occasion.
