JOP of Fuerza Regida Defends Supporting Both USA and Mexico Soccer Teams

Fuerza Regida frontman JOP set off a debate this week after he was filmed celebrating the U.S. men's national team scoring against Paraguay, then kissing the USA jersey on camera. For most fans that would be a non-event, but JOP is the face of corridos tumbados, the genre that turned Northern Mexican storytelling into a global sound. So when the man who sings about the raza puckered up for the red, white and blue, the comments lit up fast. One fan summed up the mood with a single loaded word, cien, basically calling it a betrayal of the very people who built him up.

Jesús Ortiz Paz, known to everyone as JOP, leads Fuerza Regida, the regional Mexican group that came up out of San Bernardino, California, and helped push música mexicana onto the Billboard charts. The band started around 2015 doing covers at local flyer parties and broke out with songs like "Radicamos en South Central" before scoring a Hot 100 entry with "Bebe Dame." JOP carries roots on both sides of the border, raised in California with family ties to Sinaloa, which is exactly why fans expect him to rep Mexico without flinching. When you make a living narrating the Mexican experience, people feel like they have a stake in which flag you kiss.

What got lost in the outrage is that JOP did not only show love to the USA. He was also seen celebrating Mexico's team and kissing that jersey too, which is the whole point. Living between two countries means living the classic ni de aquí, ni de allá, not fully from here and not fully from there, a feeling almost every Mexican American household knows by heart. The numbers back up how common that split identity is. According to the Pew Research Center, the share of Latinos who most often describe themselves as simply "American" rises to about 33 percent among third generation or higher, compared to just 4 percent of immigrants. Dual loyalty is not a contradiction, it is a demographic reality.

Here is the honest answer. If JOP had kissed the USA jersey and ignored Mexico completely, the backlash would carry real weight. But supporting both teams is not a sin, it is just a guy enjoying soccer and refusing to pick a single lane, kind of like trying to stay neutral at a family carne asada when the tíos start arguing about which side has the better team. JOP grew up in the U.S., built his life and his label here, and still pours Mexican culture into everything he records. Cheering for both squads is arguably the most accurate flex of who he actually is.

The JOP jersey moment touched a nerve because it asks a question the culture wrestles with constantly. Can you love where your family comes from and where you were raised at the same time, out loud, without choosing one over the other? For a lot of fans the answer is obviously yes, and JOP kissing both jerseys might just be the cleanest example of that balance going viral. The 2026 World Cup is only going to crank these conversations louder, so JOP probably will not be the last regional Mexican star forced to explain which flag he was waving.