Embattled Osorio wins over team
Coach answers critics with stunning upset, gains players’ loyalty
MOSCOW — Juan Carlos Osorio wasn’t even a year into his stint as manager of Mexico’s national team when the country’s fickle fans began calling for him to be fired.
Most new coaches get a honeymoon period. Osorio went straight from the altar to divorce court.
So after Sunday’s stunning upset of defending champion Germany in their World Cup opener — arguably one of Mexico’s most important wins in at least a decade — Osorio’s players weren’t shy about speaking up for their coach.
“We should dedicate this victory to Osorio,” Rafa Marquez, the team’s captain and spiritual leader, said in Spanish.
“Osorio has had to deal with a lot of things. But he has kept working,” said Miguel Layun, one of many Mexican players who began sobbing at the end of the game. “The tears were because we had a lot of emotions.”
Strategy beat Germany
If the only place Osorio is embraced is in the locker room, he’s fine with that. But even the most bitter critic would have to concede his brilliance against Germany.
Germany prepared for the World Cup by crunching data with state-of-the art analytics software and having players carry around devices that provide performance feedback. The coaching staff consults tablets during games.
Osorio uses multicolored pens to jot things in a notebook that is never far from his side. And Sunday the pen was mightier than the USB cord.
From the start Mexico took advantage of their superior speed, counterattacking in numbers and overwhelming a German team that got its game plan all wrong.
“The Mexicans used different tactics than we expected, that we partly didn’t have the means to deal with,” German coach Joachim Loew, whose team looked slow and old, said through a translator.
Osorio took the Mexican job in part to fulfill a lifelong dream of coaching in a World Cup, and he went into it knowing he faced an uphill battle. Only two of the previous 12 national team managers were Mexican and that made Osorio, a Colombian, an outsider.
His cerebral approach and his penchant for rotating players in and out of a lineup that changed 48 times in his first 48 games were also at odds with past coaches.
Knowledge to share
Osorio will binge-watch games from his vast video collection, searching for ideas and flaws. Last winter he toured Europe, quizzing coaches, former players, journalists — anyone who would give him a minute to talk soccer. That visit convinced Osorio to add a masseur, a chiropractor, a therapist and a sleep coach to his staff.
“I call him, in a way, like a genius because they live in a completely different world than ourselves,” Javier “Chicharito” Hernandez, Mexico’s all-time leading scorer, said last month. “He has a lot of knowledge that, even if you can speak five minutes with him about one game or one player, he gives you the way he sees football and the way he sees that player, and it’s knowledge that you can learn if you want.”
But Mexican fans made it clear they wanted to see the same players every game and preferred a manager who perfects the old, not one who searches for something new. Even the players didn’t know what to think of their coach at first. But Osorio’s loyalty and honesty won them over.
A grateful Marquez
Consider Marquez. If the last year has been a rough one for Osorio, it’s been even tougher for Marquez. In August, the U.S. Treasury Department accused him of helping a drug kingpin, freezing his bank accounts and forbidding U.S. companies from doing business with him.
In the wake of the accusations, some friends stopped calling him; others refused to take his calls.
But Osorio never wavered, making Marquez his captain, naming him to the team for Russia, then sending him on for the final minutes against Germany, allowing him to tie a record by appearing in his fifth World Cup.
“A lot of things have been said about him. Nobody trusted him except us,” said Marquez, who has seen 16 managers come and go in his national team career. “I appreciate him putting me in that list and letting me play another World Cup.”
Yet after the final World Cup warm-up match in Mexico the fans sent the team off not with cheers but with chants of “Fuera Osorio!” — or “Fire Osorio,” a plea that has become ubiquitous on social media.
So the team circled the wagons, ignored the haters and leaned on one another, their coach included.
“There were so many people criticizing, we went through a lot of stuff,” said goalkeeper Guillermo Ochoa, who made nine saves in blanking Germany. “But we did things for ourselves.”
Like defeat Germany.