"My initial interest in the soccer fields was dualistic. As I drove through Mexico I saw these goal posts in a sculptural sense as Land Art — minimal objects both defining and being defined by the landscape, akin to the work of Donald Judd or Nancy Holt. But I also saw the fields for what they were: evidence of humanity and reminders of the joy and drive to play the world’s most popular game.
In the most improbable settings I would find pitches marked by hand with neither perfect lines nor grass. Fields set against rising mountains, desert plains, and verdant forests. The goals placed like relics from another time imbued the scene with a sense of mystery — the feeling that comes from being in ancient places. As I continued to photograph I began to understand these soccer fields within the context of Mexico and its Pre-Columbian ball courts — El Juego de Pelota — sacred spaces where physical contest carried cosmological weight. These canchas reverberated with the poetic soul and heritage of Mexico's indigenous ancestry — as repositories of tradition, culture, and memory. They are the same earth, the same communities, and carry the same human impulse to mark out a field and play. The ground that remains long after human legs have run after a ball. They are the spaces where the game is learned — the roots of what the world now watches on the largest stage.”

-Photographer Daniel Borris