What might have been a comical lark about a “villain” who was actually a “hero” in shepherding the World Cup to Mexico becomes a stumbling, ungainly grind in “Mexico ’86,” a Netflix soccer film about the dirty dealing it takes to become the host country of the world’s biggest sporting event.

It spoils a decent performance by Diego Luna, although to be honest, it takes him a long time to get a bead on Martín De La Torre, the Mexican soccer federation accountant who boldly staged a leadership coup, secures Mexico’s bid and clung to it like grim death as the country reels from a deadly earthquake shortly before the matches begin.

Over the course of the few years it took for De La Torre to take over, take charge and take most of the credit for making the impossible happen, he became a national hero, which the money men behind the scenes figure is what he wanted. Then it all came undone as the most devoted soccer fan in soccer-crazed Mexico overreached, got found out and got caught.

That soccer fandom is presumed from the start in this Gabriel Ripstein sports dramedy. But it proves hard to make the case that Mexico wasn’t nearly as soccer mad before De La Torre came along. And it’s damned near impossible to organize this narrative into something that makes sense to outsiders unfamiliar with the history and historical figures who made it happen.

Martín De La Torres is a numbers guy with FEMEXFUT, the football federation, who sees his lax, non-believer boss as the wrong man in the wrong job at the very worst time when, in 1983, Brazil had to back out of hosting football’s “greatest spectacle,” set to be held in 1986.

Martín has an unhappy wife (Diana Sedano) and a beautiful, connected mistress (Karla Souza) who reserves her Thursday lunch hours for their weekly fling. He needs a job to keep both women in his life, but his fury at the lazy defeatism of boss Don Gustavo (Enrique Arreola) drives him to impulsively pitch a “scoop” to a TV sports reporter.

He goes on TV and calls the jerk out, all but kissing his job goodbye. But the mogul (Daniel Giménez Cacho) who “owns” the federation, a big stadium and assorted other businesses that benefit from soccer sees this as “ballsy.” Martín’s desperate, seat-of-the-pants pitch earns him the chance to go to Switzerland to convince soccer’s governing body, FIFA, to give the games to Mexico.

He’ll need guidance from the impressario (Álvaro Guerrero) who helped land the 1970 World Cup for Mexico. He’ll need all his powers of persuasion, as the U.S.,, with billionaire backing and Henry Kissinger on board to armtwist “allies” into voting for its bid, seems to have it in the bag.

A few bribes — FIFA was and is notoriously corrupt — and a few bits of gamesmanship later, and “You screwed the gringos, you rascal (in Spanish with subtitles, or dubbed into English)!”

But merely landing the games was not the end. Because a tragedy threatened to unravel this Third World country which wanted so desperately to take its place among First World nations. Might more bribes, more impassioned speeches and more gamemanship win the day?

“This country needs something to cling to!”

“Some of these events actually happened,” an opening credit comically reassures us as Luna voice-over narrates Martín’s story. We can only guess how much of this biography of a juggler who drops too many balls in his mad pursuit of the impossible is straight up fiction.

Casual North American soccer fans like myself might remember how ’90s U.S./Mexico tilts were hyped to the moon and how shocking it was when the norteamericanos won. That was not nearly as shocking as realizing that Mexico has never been among the elite of the beautiful game, and only once came close to greatness.

“Mexico 86” gives us a glimpse of that glory, with our soccer federation clerk mastering the art of pep talks with the Mexican rich and with FIFA members before trotting out his spiel for the team and its capable foreign coach (Davor Tomic).

But it takes a good 50 minutes before all those juggled balls are in the air. A few warm and winning moments of the sort you find in any good sports movie finally show up.

And then it all unravels again and we wonder who this fellow really was and how accurate the openly corrupt depiction of the contest for the cup and attempts at “rigging” a match in it — so that the rich impressario can cash in on having all of Mexico’s games at his stadium — are.

Luna flounders at first, finds his footing, and then the story yanks the rug out from under him in the last act.

The figures involved and FIFA chicanery depicted will play a lot clearer to your average impassioned Mexican soccer fan over age 50. But “Mexico ’86” feels as anti-climactic as USA ’26” already does before one match is played or one team is kicked out of the country by the corrupt clowns running it, with the corrupt clowns at FIFA sitting idly by to let it happen.

Rating: TV-MA, sexual situations, smoking, profanity

Cast: Diego Luna, Karla Souza, Daniel Giménez Cacho, Davor Tomic, Memo Villegas, Álvaro Guerrero and Diana Sedano.

Credits: Directed by Gabriel Ripstein, scripted by Daniel Krauze and Gabriel Ripstein. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:35