Club de cuervos (Crows' Club or Club of Crows) is a Mexican dramedy and the first Netflix original series in Spanish. The first season was uploaded August 7th, 2015 and was officially renewed for a second season on October 28, 2015. The second season was uploaded December 9, 2016. A third season was uploaded on September 29, 2017. The fourth and final season premiered on January 26, 2019.
The story is centered on the football club Cuervos F.C., based in the fictional city of Nuevo Toledo, Mexico. Following the sudden death of its long-time owner, Salvador Iglesias, his daughter Isabel and son Salvador Jr. (Chava) start a power struggle for the position of club president.
This show provides examples of:
- All Men Are Perverts: How does Isabel get the attention of a sexist sponsor who refuses to listen to her? She pays for every stripper in his favorite nightclub to stop dancing , so that he can't enjoy his visit until he agrees to her deal.
- Bilingual Bonus: When Chava Iglesias runs for the office of governor, his slogan is "Salvador Iglesias, uniting the Church and state." In Spanish, Iglesias means church, and the slogan is "Salvador Iglesias, uniendo Iglesias y estado."
- Bittersweet Ending: The Cuervos win the finals, but Zombie dies in the semifinal scoring the winning goal to get them there. Chava and Isabel manage to save the Cuervos, but they lose ownership. However, the Cuervos are now owned by the people of Nuevo Toledo—and Armando Cantú. Hugo Sánchez saves the Cuervos by agreeing to work with Ricky Lamas, which will allow him to see the world as he has always dreamed of, but takes him away from Chava and Carmelo. Isabel and Rafa realize that their marriage will not work, but Isabel looks to be starting a romance with an artist she met earlier in the season. Mary Luz is arrested for a murder she committed in Argentina but gets out after two years to be reunited with her son and Juan Pablo. Isabel stays in Nuevo Toledo and Chava moves to New York to study fashion—but they part as friends.
- Blatant Lies: Sure, Chava, you train with the team every day.
- Cassandra Truth: Nobody believes Isabel when she says that Mary Luz's baby isn't Salvador Sr.'s until the DNA test comes back negative
- Chick Magnet: Chava is a bit of this though it's mostly because of his money.
- The Cuervos team in general (sans Rafael, because he's Happily Married to Isabel, at first, that is) are this, specially Potro.
- Special mention goes to Aitor, who plays up the stereotype of the vain, hot soccer superstar. He draws female attention away from the other players, something that drove Potro mad with jealousy, to the point that it starts affecting his performance in the field (and in bed).
- Comfort Food: Isabel, after a disastrous day dealing with a sexist sponsor the team was close to losing, downs a very delicious-looking elote from a street vendor.
- Cooldown Hug: Chava gives a rather sweet one to Isabel after he finds out that Rafa cheated on her.
- Cool Uncle: Félix is this to Chava and Isabel. At least until Chava fires Goyo, publicly humiliates Félix, and he quits to form his own football club.
- Corrupt Politician: Many throughout the series, including the league's board and eventually governor Cuau.
- The Cutie: Tony's the youngest member of Cuervos, having just made his debut and turned eighteen. Too bad his much older team mates don't seem to be interested in preserving that.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Mary Luz AKA Constanza Soza is thought to have one of these, even fearing for her life once her son is born. Isabel's P.I. uncovers that her former husband is in prison for killing a man.
- Determinator: Chava, Isabels also has her moments, but Chava never lets silly things such as a budget, sponsors or the Directive Board stop his changes. Zombie, who fights to play professionally despite nobody wanting him because his heart condition makes him liable to drop dead on the field and ends up being one of (if not the) best players of the Cuervos and the team's leader.
- Distracted by the Sexy: Plenty whenever Mary Luz is around, or when there's a woman in the player's locker room. Also most people (even the Cuervos) who encounters Aitor Cardoné.
- Epiphany Therapy: The Cuervos go to therapy, learn more about each other, and bond as a team.
- Family Theme Naming: Obviously, Salvador Iglesias and Salvador Iglesias, Jr. (Chava), but Isabel also fits, just more subtly: In the same way that "Chava" is a very common nickname for "Salvador", a common nickname for "Isabel" is... "Chavela". She even gets called like this several times throughout the series (just not nearly as much as Chava).
- Female Gaze: every scene in the locker room or the showers includes at least one topless and very fit actor pretending to be a professional soccer player.
- Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Chava as the former and Isabel as the latter.
- Foreign Cuss Word: Chava calls Isabel "Isa-Bitch" behind her back.
- Foreshadowing
- El Zombie's hallucinations of the terrifying crow Xibalba, which is the name of the Mayan underworld and some of its associated gods, in La Balada de Hugo Sánchez foreshadow his eventual death in the final season.
- For Want Of A Nail
- If Salvador Iglesias, Sr. had left the team to Isabel, the team would have likely followed Félix and Goyo's 8-year plan and the entire plot of the show wouldn't have happened.
- If Tony had just removed the bullets from the gun his family gave him, Potro wouldn't have been shot, the Cuervos would probably have been saved, and the plot of the third season would have been wildly different.
- If El Zombie (or anyone else) had taken his heart condition more seriously, recognized that the treatments weren't working, and sent him to a real doctor at any earlier point in the series (AND if Zombie actually followed their advice), he probably wouldn't have had so many health problems, culminating in his death on the pitch.
- Friendship Moment: There's a very sweet one between constantly-warring Isabel and Chava in the first episode. He ruins it the next day, setting the tone for the rest of the series.
- Funny Foreigner: Quite a few of them, actually, with varying levels of intensity. The most notable examples are Potro, who's Argentinian, and Rio, who's Brazilian, and whose lines are almost nothing but Portuguese.
- Glamorous Single Mother: Mary Luz fully became one by the end of the first season.
- Gold Digger: Isabel accused Mary Luz of being one.
- Good Girls Avoid Abortion: Averted with Isabel in 'Bienvenidos a Segunda'. She goes through with it after realising she can't handle motherhood and being the club's president.
- Graceful Loser: When baby Valentín's DNA test comes back a positive match for Salvador Iglesias, Isabel goes to the hospital to congratulate Mary Luz.
- Gratuitous English: Chava often breaks out in random English. In Mexico, this is often associated with preppy, pretentious rich boys, which is exactly what Chava is.
- And later on, Ricky Lamas plays this as straight as possible. Roughly half of his dialogue is in English. Early on it's implied that this is because he isn't Mexican, but wherever he's actually from is anyone's guess.
- Heir Club for Men: In the first episode, Isabel is passed over for the inheritance she is clearly better fit for than Chava. Felix, an otherwise very reasonable person, explains it to her saying that as a woman, she won't be able to have the necessary respect from the club and team.
- Hooker with a Heart of Gold: Susanita, the trans or cross-dressing streetwalker Tony hires, is a prime example of this.
- After he gets shot and is unable to play soccer anymore, the generally friendly Potro ends up doing porn.
- Hypocrite: Chava accuses Isabel of being untrustworthy, that after half a season of being unable to keep any promises made to her or Felix.
- Inadequate Inheritor: Chava is immediately established as this, creating a harsh contrast with his earnest and hard-working sister. Throughout the first season, however, it becomes increasingly clear that hot-tempered, manipulative Isabel is no perfect candidate either.
- Indy Ploy: Basically Chava's approach, as he discards all the carefully laid-out plans his father and Felix drafted and spends most of the season trying to implement radical and volatile changes to the Cuervos, all based on an extravagant vision of making the Cuervos an equal of European clubs like Real Madrid. Counts as a Deconstruction, since Chava's approach backfires spectacularly, grinds the club to a near complete halt and gets him unanimously ousted as President in the season one finale, to be replaced by Isabel.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Towards the later episodes Chava and Isabel argue over things such as the management of the team and family related affairs. While Isabel is right in arguing with Chava regarding how he's running the club, he does bring up several good points of his own in rebuttal to hers.
- Kicked Upstairs: Prior to the main storyline of season one, Chava had been appointed as "Team Integration Vice-president". In the first episode, his father outright tells him that this was a made-up position for him to occupy, while telling him that due to her maturity her sister's position is an important position and she performs in it quite well.
- Leno Device: Chava gets lampooned in El pulso de la República, showing how his campaign to gather public support utterly fails. Crosses into Instant Humiliation: Just Add YouTube!, since El pulso de la República is a web show.
- Like Father, Unlike Son: Chava seems to have only his name in common with his father, Salvador.
- Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: The whole subplot of Mary Cruz's baby being or not a son of Salvador Sr. The DNA test comes back positive, but we later witness the lab technician blackmailing Mary Cruz for money. It's confirmed in 'Bienvenidos a Segunda' that the baby is not Salvador's.
- Manipulative Bastard: Mary Luz is very good at manipulating Chava to do her will.
- May–December Romance: Salvador would have been easily in his late fifties at the time of his death, while Mary Luz is somewhere in her early thirties or thirty-five, at latest.
- Multinational Team: The Cuervos, at least for the first two seasons. This is a plot point for the third season, in which new rules allow more foreigners into the Mexican league, disincentivizing teams from hiring Mexican players. Through a series of misfortunes, the Iglesias siblings are left to recruit a team from the leftover players who nobody wants, and end up with the only all-Mexican team in the Mexican league during season 3. Aside from Mexico, members of the Cuervos come from Argentina, Spain, and Brazil.
- Mushroom Samba: Chava experiences one during Ricky Lamas's opulent beach party after he drops some unspecified drug (or drugs, god knows what the hell was in that pill). He promptly spends the entire night and four others, since his trip actually stretched across a five night bender wandering into different tents and facing hardships and his own demons. At one point he sees his whole family taunting him as the characters of a surreal, Buñuel-esque art film.
- Pepenador and Zombie's hallucinatory experiences in Nicaragua during La Balada de Hugo Sánchez, also due to some unspecified drug, food, or possibly Nicaragua.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: While Chava's pretentious, out-of-touch rich boy character isn't an Expy of any real person in particular, one montage of him trying to get public sympathy features him doing similar Epic Fails to those made by real-life Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, perhaps the most obvious being one incident where he was unable to pronounce the word "infrastructure" in English, much like Peña Nieto was once. (Ironically, this ended up looking like an out-of-character moment for Chava, since he has been shown to be fluent in English.) This even ends up in-universe to being mocked by El pulso de la República, well-known for having also mocked Peña Nieto's faux-pas.
- Need a Hand, or a Handjob?: Played for laughs: the Cuervos think the team's masseuse offering a handjob is a sign of good luck.
- Never My Fault: Chava has a serious problem with this, and he never seems to consider the possibility that anything going wrong might be his fault.
- Odd Friendship:
- Hugo Sánchez and Moisés in the Ballad of Hugo Sánchez.
- Isabel and Potro when Potro volunteers to act as Isabel's "chori-blocker" when she is being pursued by Fede.
- Isabel's and Chava's mothers are oddly close.
- Overly Long Name: In season 3, the name of the team is changed from "Los Cuervos FC" to "Los Cuervos Negros Salvajes de Nuevo Toledo en Puebla FC."
- Parental Favoritism: Played with, in Salvador's relationship with his children. It's clear Isabel is the more competent candidate to run the club out of the two siblings, but is snubbed because she's a woman. However, even Salvador before dying admits to Chava he's not fit to be the club's president.
- Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The Cuervos, especially in season 3 when they sell all of their players to other teams and have to recruit a new team from the players that no other team picked.
- Rousing Speech: Many, given that this is a show about an athletic team.
- Hugo Sánchez's halftime speech during the final in The Ballad of Hugo Sánchez is one of the funnier versions of these.
- Running Gag: Chava saying the name of his assistant and someone expecting to see the real Hugo Sánchez
- Serious Business: Soccer. The State Governor is part of the board of directives and the whole show is based around the goings-on of a soccer team. This is somewhat Truth in Television in Mexico (where the series takes place).
- Shout-Out: Hugo Sánchez, Chava's personal assistant seems to exist solely so that Chava can say his name every chance he gets.
- Sibling Rivalry: They might actually be step-siblings, but Chava and Isabel Iglesias have a very deep-seated one since they were kids.
- Spin-Off: Two of them!
- La Balada de Hugo Sánchez (The Ballad of Hugo Sánchez) takes place during episode 1, season 4 and is the story of how Hugo Sánchez takes the Cuervos to compete in a tournament in Nicaragua. We get some Backstory on Hugo's home life.
- Yo, Potro (I, Potro) is a mockumentary-style spinoff wherein Potro travels home to Argentina to attend his brother's wedding after being fired from the Pumas due to his Career-Ending Injury.
- Spoiled Brat:
- Chava is the series' primary example
- Aitor Cardoné is definitely this, due to his fame and skill, he even refuses to obey Rafael when he becomes the new TD.
- Tearjerker: For a comedy, there are many moments of these.
- When Félix quits the Cuervos after one abuse too many by Chava and later on when he leaves the world of soccer altogether.
- Despite his jerkass tendencies, Chava's expression when he finally realizes what is happening when Isabel is about to remove him as president of the Cuervos.
- Hands down, El Zombie's death after scoring the winning goal at the semifinals. His out-of-body experience as he realizes what is happening and pleads with the hallucinatory crow that has been haunting him all season to let him live is particularly devastating.
- The goodbye between Chava and Hugo Sánchez after Hugo Sánchez sacrifices himself to work for Lamas to save the team.
- Undying Loyalty:
- Poor Felix has this in spades for both the Team, the man who made him vicepresident, and his family. After Chava publicly yells at him and degrades him, he decides he's had enough and quits.
- Hugo Sánchez is very loyal towards Chava even if he mistreats him.
- "Well Done, Son" Guy: Both Chava and Isabel are this, each manifesting it in a different way.
- Wham Line: In Season 2 Episode 4, Chava comes back from his own exile after losing and humiliating the club and himself with a new attitude and makes peaces with Isabel, even trying to convince Aitor to not proceed with suing the club, at the end of the episode they share a very heartwarming moment and after Isabel leaves He calls Aitor and tells him to keep pushing the demand until he gets the presidence back
- Where Are They Now: At the end of season 4, we get a follow-up on many of the characters.
- Isabel is still president of the Cuervos after being elected by the new owners of the Cuervos, the people of Nuevo Toledo and Armando Cantú. She appears to be in a relationship with an artist she met earlier in the season.
- Rafa Reina opens the restaurant that he had dreamed of earlier in his and Isabel's relationship, and has formed a new family with his daughter and her mother, the woman with whom he cheated on Isabel.
- Mary Luz gets out of prison in Argentina after two years, where she is reunited with her son and Juan Pablo, with whom she has started a relationship.
- Goyo joins Las Tarántulas FC, now owned by Mary Luz and Juan Pablo.
- Emaíl has a gay son and is reluctantly accepting of his relationship.
- Cuau is still the governor of Nuevo Toledo, and he renames the Cuervos' stadium after Benito "El Zombie" Guerrero, erecting a statue of Zombie in front of the stadium.
- Aitor and Axel go to Atlético Madrid, fulfilling Aitor's desire to return to Europe and Axel's dream of proving himself on the pitch.
- Moises Suárez becomes a famous film actor.
- Chava goes to fashion school in New York with Paty Villa, who is there for business school.
- Pepenador starts a recycling empire, and he and Chava design a fashion line using partially-recycled materials together.
- Though not explicitly stated, Potro is presumably still the coach of the Cuervos.
- Isabel and Chava write a book about their experiences, which is essentially the show Club de Cuervos in memoir form.
- Where the Hell Is Springfield?: We're never told exactly where Nuevo Toledo is. The biggest clue we're given is that it's a three hour car ride from Mexico City (in which direction is a mystery), meaning it's most certainly in the heart of Mexico, with some of the candidate states it could be in being Guanajuato, Estado de Mexico, and Hidalgo, but a straight answer is never given. The fact that some of the characters speak with a noticeable Northern Mexican accent does not help matters.
- Xanatos Speed Chess: Mary Luz quickly proves her smarts by turning every situation on its head so as to make it work in her favor. Even the (very believable) accusation that her baby wasn't an Iglesias doesn't stop her from getting her dues.
