Why isn’t el Tri better? Mexico is the most populous nation in the Spanish-speaking world, and soccer is by far the most popular sport. Youth leagues and impromptu street games dot the landscape from one peninsular extreme (Yucatan) to another (Baja California). The nation boasts a rabid fan base as well as a successful pro league that lures talent from around the globe. These are the ingredients for a world power.
Yet far from challenging Argentina and Brazil for hemispheric supremacy, Mexico has barely kept pace with the US for the past ten years. They have exited in the round of 16 in the past five World Cups. (The only Cups in which Mexico bettered that result were 1970 and 1986, at both of which they served as host country.) They have won just two of the past six 
Gold Cups (though they have a chance to make it two straight tonight), and they have never raised a Copa América. They have lost to Portugal, Uruguay, Argentina in the past two World Cups, and have tied such powers as Angola and South Africa. El Tri isn’t a bad team, but it isn’t very good either.
And while few fans are satisfied with the team’s results, it would be foolish to expect much more. If you look at the recent rosters, Mexico has not been blessed with transcendent talent, particularly on the attacking side of the field. Argentine transplant Guillermo Franco, one of those wonderful Heskeyan forwards who somehow base their game on not scoring, still managed to swing starting gigs in two separate World Cups. Cuauhtémoc Blanco, the most popular player of his generation, displayed an admirable creative flair and struck the ball beautifully, but he always moved as though he’d just finished off a lonche de carnitas and a pair of cigarettes.
The talent gap has been especially evident with the forwards the Mexican national team exports. Kikín Fonseca was the breakout player in Germany ‘06, which he parlayed into a four-year contract with Benfica. He lasted eight games. Nery Castillo excelled at the 2007 Copa América, but has scored a grand total of three goals in club play since then, while changing teams six times. Omar Bravo, previously a Tri mainstay, was voted to La Liga’s worst 11 during his single season at La Coruña. While the nation has produced a handful of quality defenders (Carlos Salcido and Rafa Márquez being the two most famous of the bunch), the Mexican forward typically goes to Europe only to return humbled.
With that in mind, it’s not much of a surprise that such a group fails to dominate Concacaf or compete with world powers. Opinions of el Tri are tinged with disappointment, which is a bit unfair; disappointment should be reserved for teams that could reasonably expect better results. Spain in the Raúl era was a disappointment. England disappoints on a biennial basis. Real Madrid has turned Champion’s League disappointment into a rite of spring. Mexico? They play to their talent.
Javier Aguirre, who took a break from his ongoing journey through the clubs of Spain’s second tier to coach his native country to its round of 16 exit in South Africa, alluded to this fact with a brutally frank assessment of his team’s chances heading into the 2010 World Cup:
There are a lot of expectations regarding the Mexican teams and then there are comments that go too far. Champions? Mexico is what it is, it was 15th in Germany, in Korea when I left it was 11th, and four years prior in France number 13, and four years prior in the United States, 13. Mexico has been bouncing between 10 and 15 in the last four World Cups…
Aguirre was right, both in his historical analysis and his implicit prediction, but such is a tough pill to swallow. Rather than accept mediocrity, Mexican fans float a number of alternative narratives to explain Mexico’s lack of success, all of them more comforting than, “We simply don’t have the horses”. One popular complaint holds that nosy club owners and TV execs (namely Emilio Azcárraga, the owner of Televisa and Club América) are to blame, sabotaging what would otherwise be a dominant squad. That might be worth considering if Mexico were consistently producing stars, if el Tri were less than the sum of its parts, but that’s not the case.
Another balm for the let-down Mexican fan is the tireless refrain, Jugamos como nunca, perdimos como siempre. (In English, “We played like never before, but we lost as we always do.”) You hear this in Mexico after virtually every tournament elimination. The implication is that the squad reached new heights of football greatness on the pitch, even if the scoreboard, damned stubborn thing that it is, doesn’t reflect it. Unfortunately, against the Argentinas of the world, it is a false claim; a more accurate (though less lyrical) mantra would be: Jugamos como siempre, perdimos como siempre.
In short, Mexico’s relative insignificance in international football isn’t a case of its players underachieving. The problem is something deeper: futbolísticamente, the entire nation underachieves. For close to a generation, Mexico simply has not produced world-class players, despite the best efforts of 110 million people. This is a much broader embarrassment.
But Aguirre’s gloomy diagnosis, while accurate enough through 2010, failed to anticipate the singularity of the generation currently coming of age.
The most obvious difference between the middling teams of years past and today’s squad is Chicharito. The Hugo Sánchez comparisons may be a bit premature, but he is the most lethal scorer lining up for Mexico since, well, Hugo Sánchez.
Beyond Man Utd’s beloved import, Giovani dos Santos is playing with a pace and aggressiveness that reflects his grooming at Barcelona far more than his debacle at Tottenham. After an impressive half-season at Racing Santander, he is being mentioned as a Sevilla transfer target. When he’s fit, Andres Guardado’s ability to test the keeper from a distance is unmatched by any recent Mexican national. Pablo Barrera wasn’t a favorite of Avram Grant’s this past season (which probably reflects well on Barrea), but his recent performance with el Tri resembles much more the winger whose darting runs sank France in South Africa than the West Ham bench-warmer. And none of these players is yet older than 25.
This group can soften up even a stout defense. Unlike the 2006 and 2010 World Cup teams, with the current version of el Tri, fans can expect a touch of brilliance and an occasional offensive explosion. Representing the latter category: Mexico tallied 14 goals against Cuba, Costa Rica, and El Salvador during the group stage of the Gold Cup. The former: Hernandez’s game-winning deflection with his instep against Guatemala, off of a threaded low cross from Barrera, was sublime. Guardado’s sidewinder volley from the corner of the box versus Costa Rica, which drew the reaction of “This is poetry without a pen!” from the Univision crew, was even better.
Of course, the defeated opponents named above are not an impressive lot. The US is, as always, a stiffer test, but even a win in the final in the Gold Cup on enemy turf doesn’t count as a concrete achievement so much as a potential frustration to be sidestepped. If Hernandez and the rest can’t lead el Tri to something more substantial than a Gold Cup trophy over the next decade, that will indeed qualify them as underachievers, and Mexico will be right to be disappointed.
Despite five years of residence in Mexico, Patrick Corcoran is rooting for the US in tonight’s final. He blogs about politics, security, and (occasionally) soccer at Gancho.
In the second most popular sport in the poll, boxing, Mexico currently has twice as many world champions as any other country.
Of course, if this rant is any indication, Castillo measures success merely by playing on a team outside of Mexico, rather than performing well with them.
This misjudgment doubles as a rather damning critique of his performance in South Africa; inexplicably, Andrés Guardado and Javier Hernandez each played less than half the minutes that Mexico was on the field. Had el Tri beaten Uruguay instead of falling 1-0, a game in which Guardado played just 45 minutes and Hernandez half an hour, they would have had Uruguay’s relatively comfortable path the semifinals.
Ironically, the traditionally solid back line could turn into a weakness; the defensive core of Márquez, Salcido, Ricardo Osorio, and Francisco Rodríguez, with 33 World Cup appearances and more than 300 caps between them, will all be on the plus side of 30 by October.
The rumors of match-fixing do take some of the enjoyment out off the throttlings, though.
Read More: Mexico
by Patrick Corcoran · June 25, 2011
Even with more than logic and valid arguments you speak of Mexico as if it was the only country where this happens.
When was the last time that Argentina won a world Cup? even with Messi on the field it seems far away.
And of course the US who is been playing with pretty much the same XI since Bruce Arenas… where’s Edu and Altidore who were supposed to be the next big worlwide soccer promise?
You aldo forgot to say that this Gold Cup is also a ticket to Confederations Cup (which Mexico has won against Brazil) so winning it it’s not just a “potential frustration to be sidestepped”
Still a great column! Congrats!
PS Mexico 2 – US 0
Sadly, the Gold Cup finals will be between two nations of equal underachievement in the football world. As a US fan, I would have been much happier it we didn’t make it as far as we did. If Mexico wins, they beat a blah US team. If the US team wins, they beat a underachieving Mexico team. For me, I’ll be watching Chicjarito, he will at least make the game fun two watch.
Disagree about Mexico being right where they should be. With 110 million people and a better economy they should at least be as good as Argentina. It must be mental: the losses to Uruguay in 2010, USA in 2002 and perhaps even Germany in 1998 should not have happened.
The puzzle is coming together. Now I get why my piece for this website was unwanted: Everything and anything written on this website must have link with the US either implicitly or explicitly. Also, I probably should have referred to ‘it’ as soccer.
Someone sent this to Brian on Twitter:
http://leftbackinthechangingroom.blogspot.com/2009/10/why-not-mexico.html?m=1
I don’t love the article but I’m really interested in the idea of Mexico and US as the Old Firm of international football–too isolated from quality opposition to ever develop properly. I don’t really know what it means for the US and Mexico going forward but I think the metaphor is apt and might–with greater reflection that my current two minutes-worth–yield some ideas about what comes next for these two teams.
@stowe Could we…could we apply to join the Premier League?
I view this last decade of US and Mexico development as an “NCAA era” – the two nations produced polished 22-23 year olds with little upside to largely warm European benches for mid-sized clubs, but rarely sent over raw and exciting 12-16 year old prospects who could become world class with proper training.
The success of the domestic leagues in both countries has raised the level across the bar, but also offers a too soft comfort blanket to players who yearn for the perks of being a big fish in a small pond.
And yes, I wrote this post less than two months ago http://www.runofplay.com/2011/05/19/exploitation-youth-soccer-and-college/
I was impressed by Mexico in S Africa and the football they played. Salcido and Torrado impressed in particular, I’ve always been surprised that the latter never made it to England. That said, it was noticeable even then that they’d nothing up front and were completely unable to turn possession into goals. Which was a pity
That said, Mexico should really be performing better. We can talk for hours about the magical process of creating stars (as if they were manufactured in a factory somewhere) but there’s no excuse for going to the World Cup with a starting striker unable to make the grade at West Ham. A nation of 5-6 million can afford to shrug the shoulders during a barren spell, but one of 100+ million should really be examining why the players are not coming through
@Brian Phillips didn’t Australia already sort of pull that trick when they split from Oceania?
Although, as the article mentions, Mexico’s biggest ‘names’ over the years have been defenders like Marquez and Salcido, it’s always seemed to me that when it comes to the World Cup, they produce scintillating attacking football but are let down by defensive fragility and an inability to put chances away. They are very much the Arsenal of international football.
It would have been interesting to learn more about why such a large country doesn’t produce the quantity of top players of a Brazil or Argentina.
Very good arguments but they have been mentioned many times before by the Mexican media(excluding Televisa and TV Azteca). I remember Jose Ramon Fernandez explaining once on why he thought Mexico had not progress in soccer since the sport in Mexico exploded the 1970′s, he said it had to do with the Mexican mentality of not being able to work as a group, as a team. He gave examples like you did with regards to how Mexico has succeeded in an individual sport like boxing, and to some extent Baseball. But when it came to other sports like Basketball, American football, and soccer they were just awful.
Your article has some good points, the fact that Aguirre didn’t play the best players in south africa and the history of the “ya merito”. But I think it doesn’t give solutions. Its funny to me that the US puts itself below or above Mexico as it helps them, sometimes behing a humble CONCACAF team ( even though in 1994 the Us federation started the 2010 project where the objective was to win the world cup in the previous mentioned year), others puting on themselves the label of giants of concacaf, which was first used to describe the mexican team.
I think since we have the game coming up in a couple of hours, this article feels like a patada en los huevos. A comparison of the two teams and a look at the future would have made for a better read.
Good luck and viva mexico.
@Brouhaha stop being such a narcissist.
The last paragraph is correct. Mexico has to go beyond the north american continent and even past the atlantic sea and play against european teams. True, national soccer teams continue to grow throughout the years but Mexico has to play against the bigger ( not exactly better) to experience “their” soccer.
@Robert Morse Well okay, that’s one way of getting your view across. Or you could have found articles that counter my raving nonsense, but yeah, yeah, I see where your’e going at. By calling a person that you’ve never met, know nothing of and probably never will, you totally changed my conceited ways. BTW if my comment is deleted…
@Jose Cardenas
You’re misunderstanding the article. Argentina haven’t won a major tournament since 1993, despite the incredible talents that they have produced. Given the caliber of players that Mexico has, the last 16 is a reasonable result. Mexico aren’t underachieving given their talent, they’re simply not producing the truly world class talent that they should given the country’s population and obsession with the sport. They have 1 member of the Fifa 100 (Hugo Sanchez), compared to Argentina with 10 and Brazil with 15 (not including several controversial omissions). The other side of the coin is Holland. Holland have had years and years of elite talent (7 Ballon d’Or victories, with Cruyff and Van Basten getting 3 each) yet only one major trophy (Euro 1988).
Hi everyone, thanks for your comments and opinions. @Jayr, I didn’t intend the piece to be a big kick to the junk for Mexico fans (a group I am a part of, even if I pull for the US in head to head matchups), but I imagine that the result erased any of that feeling. Especially the dos Santos goal.
Mexico is better this way. If they were good Chicharito would not be as cool. Mexican food rules my life. I’d put money on Mexico going to the South American final.
I think you’re misrepresenting Mexico’s recent footballing history:
2011 Gold Cup: Mexico roll, coming from 2-0 down to beat the USA 4-2.
2010 Gold Cup: Mexico make it out of a tough group including Uruguay, France and hosts South Africa to lose to Argentina after getting unsettled early.
2009 Gold Cup: Mexico roll to a 5-0 victory over team USA.
2007 Copa America: Mexico beats Brazil 2-0, rolls Paraguay 6-0, then loses to runner-ups Argentina, finishing 3rd.
2007 Gold Cup: Mexico lose to the US 2-1 in the final, a tight match.
2006 World Cup: Mexico gets seeded, scrapes out of their group with 4 points, and lose to Argentina in the Round of 16 after a Maxi Rodriguez wondergoal.
2005 Confederations Cup: Mexico beats Brazil 1-0, wins it’s group, then loses to Argentina 6-5 on penalties.
2005 Gold Cup: Mexico get knocked out in the first knockout round to Colombia.
2004 Copa America: Mexico beats Argentina 1-0, wins a group including Argentina and Uruguay, then loses to eventual champions Brazil.
Of all the major tournaments in which Mexico has participated in since 2004, the only time they underperformed was in the 2005 Gold Cup. In every other tournament, they’ve been knocked out Brazil and Argentina, two of the best teams in the world, and the US, their regional rival.
Have they underperformed? Not at all. That’s a pretty respectable record that most nations would die to have.
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In regards to Mexico not producing world class talent, I think you have to take into account the stability of the Mexican First Division. The reason that Mexico’s First Division draws so much talent from the Americas has much to do with the high wages the league offers. Good, young Mexican players, with good wages in their home country have little reason to go abroad and take lower wages, even if they could become better players.
The same goes for European clubs. Why buy an expensive Mexican who expects reasonable wages when you could get a number of Brazilian or Argentine prospects for pocket-change?
Even though its a very clear thing, few people really understand (let alone, say it) this current and evergoing situation for mexican football. Even the more rational people I know get at some point, some sort of unreasonable expectations for El Tri de mi corazôn.
Great article sir.
Would it not benefit both Mexico and the US, as well as the South American sides, for CONCACAF and CONMEBOL to combine? There are only ten members of CONMEBOL after all, and while their massive fight to the death every four years is very enjoyable, it is a little tough.
Presuming playoffs for the weaker teams, you could add the ten CONMEBOL members to the best fourteen from CONCACAF, and have four groups of six teams each, with the top two going through to the World Cup. That way the US and Mexico would play really good teams on a regular basis, and the traditional footballing powerhouse that is South America would have more chances for its teams to qualify.
I see no downsides on the footballing side, as we would see more strong teams reach the World Cup, and more chances for weak teams to improve. The non-footballing downsides are the extra travel costs (and I’m sure FIFA could stump up for these) and the altruism needed to acheive such a change – an altruism rarely found in FIFA.
Or is this just my European cultural colonialism sparking up? I’d be pretty unhappy if you lumped UEFA in with the AFC as we’re all part of Eurasia…
@Sheedy Given the whole Jack Warner affair, it may be more likely to dump the Caribbean and just combine South, Central, and North America into one 20-team confederation.
That would make for a great Copa America. however, it would kind of mess up World Cup qualifying. The seeding for different groups would probably ensure that Argentina and Brazil would never play each other and would decrease the likelihood of the US and Mexico playing each other as well. Fewer rivalry games is not a good thing.
@Sheedy You’re exactly right Sheedy. The solution is to create a single confederation for the Americas. That way both Mexico and the US get to play against stronger national teams on a regular basis, leading to better results. It’s also fairer in that the 5th/6th CONMEBOL team is always much stronger than the 3rd CONCACAF team (see Uruguay: Last CONMEBOL qualifier…. 4th place at the World Cup).
It also leads to better club competition, with American and Mexican teams playing Copa Libertadores and Copa Sudamericana (after a proper rename of course, how about Copa Americana?).
None of this will happen though. CONCACAF is one hot corrupt mess, and CONMEBOL is probably worse. Nothing that makes sense in paper has ever been adopted in either confederation. Sigh…
@Nick Meh, fewer rivalries is a small price to pay for better players and national teams.
I’d design it in two rounds. The teams in the lowest half has a qualifying round by themselves for the right to play the teams in the upper half, in big groups, so as to have more games than just 5 or 6.
Say every team plays 10 games and the top 3 teams of every group qualify and you have 3 groups. In that case you could see, depending on seeding and luck, Brazil v. USA or Argentina v. USA.
You can’t tell me playing Argentina/Brazil/Uruguay/Paraguay/Chile on a regular basis isn’t good for the national team.
@Shann
If Mexico were bringing their best team to the Copa America they might have an outside shot at getting to the final. I don’t think they are, though — very few countries like to send players to two different tournaments in one summer. The US did the same thing four years ago, winning the Gold Cup with their best squad and then sending a “B” team to the Copa America. I could see Mexico maybe sending Gio to the Copa America, because he hasn’t played much at the club level this year, but I doubt any of their other big players will go. I’d be surprised if they made it out of the group stages.
It is silly to think that combining Concacaf and COMENBOL would automatically be good for the United States or Mexican National team, for the simple reason that it would mean that they would miss the World Cup on a pretty regular basis. Failing to qualifiy even one year would hurt the game as a whole in the United States. American kids would not see their countrymen in the best competition and the profile of the game would suffer. Also dual citizen players would likely look for teams with an easier path to the World Cup. Imagine how hard it would be to bring young players along when you are constantly playing the likes of Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay. Continued participation in the World Cup is more important to development than continued difficulty in qualifying.
Australia switched to Asia as much because qualifying would be less of a crap shoot as because it has better competition. Their playoff against the 5th place team from South America or some European team was much tougher than a longer more predictable Asian group stage for qualification.
@Carlos Sucre I think CONCACAF and CONMEBOL only get 8 spots between them (3.5 and 4.5 respectively). What would be more likely would be 4 groups of 5 with the winners getting World Cup spots,the top 3 runners up getting spots, and then the 4th/worst runner up playing the best Caribbean qualifier for an 8th place.
So you’d have two “big” teams per group, each of which is reasonably confident of qualifying. Not much better than the current CONCACAF qualifying…and a definite decline in the current CONMEBOL qualifying setup.
@Nick The current CONMEBOL qualifying system is a travesty. Those guys play 18 games over the course of nearly 3 years. It’s the longest qualifying system, with the most games, and the toughest.
Let’s see if we can find a more competitive design. The one you propose is realistic, and you’re right in that it probably wouldn’t be much more competitive.
So, we’ve got 10 teams in CONMEBOL. There will be 6 teams in the final round of CONCACAF qualifiers. So, say 16 teams in total (we’ll let the Caribbean minnows play for the right to be in the last 16), with 8 qualifying spots.
Two groups of 8, with 14 games would make some sense. It’s still long, sure, but it keeps the competitiveness that would be lost in, say, a format of 4 groups of 4 with half the teams qualifying from each group.
You then seed the 16 teams by FIFA rankings, in alternating fashion. So, right now, you’d have:
The top 6 teams in CONCACAF are: USA (22), Mexico (28), Honduras (43), Jamaica (55), Costa Rica (56), Panama (67). The rankings for the 10 CONMEBOL teams are: Brazil (4), Argentina (5), Uruguay (7), Chile (13), Paraguay (23), Colombia (50), Peru (54), Ecuador (64), Venezuela (68), Bolivia (102).
Now, based on current FIFA Rankings, the two groups would go like this:
Group A: Brazil, Uruguay, USA, Mexico, Colombia, Jamaica, Ecuador, Panama.
Group B: Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Honduras, Peru, Costa Rica, Venezuela, Bolivia.
You can’t tell me USA and Mexico wouldn’t benefit from playing Brazil, Uruguay, Colombia and Ecuador twice over a qualifying period… and I actually like their chances of qualifying out of that group.
@Carlos Sucre I like the CONMEBOL setup because it’s high-quality. I’d rather the US play 18 games like that instead of the 16 plus two against Mexico that it does to qualify.
The question for your idea is how do you qualify for that last big group? Or would you propose something like everyone who qualified for the previous World Cup makes it into the final 16 and then the other 8 spots are up for grabs? For those 8 spots, you’re talking about another 6 games or more to qualify—taking the number of games played for those teams to at least 20.
@Carlos Sucre: “The current CONMEBOL qualifying system is a travesty. Those guys play 18 games over the course of nearly 3 years”
Whereas a typical UEFA team will play 22 qualification games over a similar period. Remember that, unlike the Euros, there is no qualifying process for the Copa America. A South American team is not playing significantly more games than its European counterpart
“It’s the longest qualifying system, with the most games, and the toughest”
Yes, the toughest. Not just in terms of distances travelled but also with regards the sheer quality of the competition. There are very few walkover games in S America and any team that emerges from that region can be legitimately expected to reach the last 16 of a World Cup. The format (which I much prefer to the stop-start nature of European qualification) has been fantastic in aiding the development of S American football over the past two decades
And you have to ask just what there is for CONMEBOL in admitting the US or Mexico. Why should they jettison a format that clearly works, and why should the Caribbean accept being shunted into a lower tier, just because some Americans fancy playing Brazil on a regular basis?
@Nick The top four teams from the two groups would qualify to the World Cup, for a total of 8.
@Fast Eddie Eddie, UEFA teams play 10 games to qualify for the World Cup and 10 games to qualify for the Euro, so that’s 20 qualifying games.
Under a unified CONMEBOL + CONCACAF, there would also be qualifying for the Copa America… under a format I haven’t thought up yet.
The point of this article was to find out why Mexico (and by extension the US) isn’t stronger in footballing terms. My answer is that they don’t play quality competition often enough…. the consolidated confederation solves that problem.
CONMEBOL would gain more TV revenue by selling the rights to not just WC qualifiers but also to Copa America qualifiers.
Also, Caribbean football already plays on a lower tier… those teams have to qualify to play the big North and Central American teams. My proposal does not demote or promote them one bit.
Anyone see Ocampo’s goal against England in the Women’s World Cup?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noTcYKjuH_g&feature=player_embedded
Tasty.
Good article and interesting exchange following. I’d only say that population does not equal success, the Mexican first division is not a good developer of talent, and I don’t see CONMEBOL and CONCACAF merging anytime soon, although it would be a nifty experiment.
That depiction of the Mexican flag is super sharp btw.
Some great ideas here. I see the point people are making about CONMEBOL – they have relatively little to gain beyond some high-profile games against the US and Mexico.
A combined Copa Americana, comprising the CONMEBOL teams plus six invited sides from CONCACAF might be a better idea, would give Mexico and the USMNT (I love how you lot acronymise your country) more tournament experience and a chance at better football.
The Prostitute Party is raining on my parade!
@Carlos Sucre I was asking how you manage qualification to those last two groups?
@Nick I guess I kept a bit of pro-CONMEBOL bias by automatically sending through all the South American teams to the last two groups and making the Caribbean teams qualify for the last six of the North & Central American teams, the same way they qualify now.
Perhaps there can be a qualifying system using a similar process used in the Champions League, where the champions of lesser leagues play qualifying rounds to get to the real deal.
In this case, maybe you can say the top 14 ranked teams in the Americas are automatically through to the last 16, and then the remaining teams play qualifying rounds (league or knockout format, whichever you like) to be the last 2 teams in the final two groups.
Sound fair? What do you think/propose?
My first memory of Mexico was their being hammered by Tunisia and West Germany in the 1978 World Cup so progress has been slow but sure. I think they are – like Turkey in Europe – a team that is almost there and when one considers that they have been unlucky with the second round draw in the last two world cups, I would not be surprised at all should they do better in Brazil in 2014.
Well, what do you know? “The 2015 Copa America could for the first time include the entire American continent, after North American governing body CONCACAF made a formal request to FIFA to be included in the South American tournament.” – Goal.com
I finally get why Mexico isn’t very good…..I never even hear of them anymore!
I agree with “Disagree about Mexico being right where they should be. With 110 million people and a better economy they should at least be as good as Argentina. It must be mental: the losses to Uruguay in 2010, USA in 2002 and perhaps even Germany in 1998 should not have happened.”