WORLD CUP USA ’94 / THE FIRST ROUND : Spotlight : POLITICS, SOCCER ON THE SAME TICKET

Every four years, Mexicans are said to renew their faith that the national soccer team will win the World Cup and, every six years, that the new ruling-party presidential candidate will pull the country back from the brink of disaster.

In 1994, they are dubious about both team and party. Mexicans tuned out seven months of peasant uprising, political assassinations and kidnapings to turn their attention to the national soccer team Sunday--and watched it lose to Norway, 1-0.

Some analysts seriously suggest that unless the team’s performance improves, failure on the field could bode ill at the polls for the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which is facing the tightest presidential race in its 65 years of rule. Sports fans might take out their frustrations on the governing party when they vote Aug. 21, according to that logic.

Nearly one-third of the 600 people polled in the capital a few weeks before the World Cup told the newspaper Reforma that they believe the national team’s performance will influence the outcome of the election. One-third said the PRI would be hurt by the team’s failure and 42% said a good showing would help the ruling party.

Pressure for change in the relationship between soccer and politics was building even before the team left Mexico. An opposition candidate challenged the government’s exclusive rights to the national team.

National Action Party standard-bearer Diego Fernandez de Cevallos, running neck and neck with the ruling party’s Ernesto Zedillo for first place in the polls, took advantage of the national soccer mania to dispel a cumbersome aristocratic image. Wearing faded jeans and a work shirt, he attended the national team’s final exhibition game in Mexico City and won big points by buying a round of beer for everyone in his section.

PRI leaders such as Ignacio Pichardo, chairman of the ruling party’s campaign, downplay the importance the elimination of the team might have.

“We just want our team to play well, realizing that our chances of making it to the finals are remote,” he said. “But there are lots of Latin teams that are going to please us by beating the Anglo-Saxon teams.”