New Delhi, July 11 -- Mexico, joyful, violent and sublime, as a football team and a nation, are out of the World Cup. It particularly pains me that they lost at that heaving cauldron of noise, the fantastic Azteca stadium. I thought they might at least make it to the semi-finals, to provide redemption to a nation that was convinced-or at least hoped-that a time for celebration was, finally, at hand.

Glorious Mexico, where football and the fate it delivers send the masses spinning into delirium and tears, where the poets wax lyrical in defeat. The writer Juan Villoro once wrote, "Dios es Redondo." God is round. His assessment of El Tri 20 years ago (borrowed from an Argentine coach) summed up Mexico's fate this month at the Azteca: "Jugam...