Liga MX faces another shakeup: another coach tempted by Argentina

Liga MX may be dealing with déjà vu. Just weeks after Fernando Gago walked away from Chivas mid season to take charge at Boca Juniors, another Argentine bench could pull a coach back home. This time, the man in the spotlight is Puebla manager Hernán Cristante.

Gimnasia y Esgrima La Plata, the club where Cristante began his career and built his earliest football identity, has moved from admiration to action. According to TUDN, an offer is already on the table, and the Argentine side sees Cristante as a priority option to lead their next project.

A job only just started in Puebla

Cristante only took over Puebla on August 25, stepping into one of the toughest assignments in the Apertura 2025. The club sat at the bottom of the table, directionless, and in need of someone to stabilize the season rather than magically flip it.

The progress has been modest: improved structure, a team competing with more discipline, and small signs of recovery. Still, Puebla remains last with nine points and two games left. This is a rescue job that hasn’t finished, which makes the timing significant.

Emotion vs duty

For coaches, few calls hit harder than the one that comes from home. Cristante knows La Plata. He lived it. He feels it. Gimnasia is the club that shaped him before he became a Liga MX figure at Toluca and later a manager in Mexico.

It is easy to understand why he would listen, and why Puebla fears history repeating itself.

Mexico has seen this before. Ambitious projects disrupted not by failure, but opportunity. Liga MX wants stability; South American tradition often returns for its own.

What happens next

Puebla hasn’t made an official comment, but internally the club knows there’s little leverage if Cristante wants the move. The question now is whether he chooses loyalty to a project in progress, or answers the emotional pull to return to Argentina and lead a club where his story began.

The league calendar says two matches remain. Reality suggests decisions could arrive sooner.

Gimnasia waits. Puebla watches. Liga MX braces again.