Mexico eye recovery against New Zealand
MEXICO CITY: Mexico will seek to put their nightmarish World Cup qualifying campaign behind them today when they host New Zealand in the first leg of a last-chance intercontinental play-off.
The Mexicans are usually overwhelming favourites against smaller football nations like the “All Whites” at their imposing, 105 000-capacity Azteca Stadium in Mexico City.
But El Tri won just once in five home games in the final qualifying round of the North, Central America and Caribbean (Concacaf) group, finishing fourth out of six teams.
While the US, Costa Rica and Honduras won direct tickets to Brazil, Mexico barely secured a play-off spot – a surprisingly poor showing for a powerhouse that was last absent from a World Cup in 1990.
The dismal results led the football federation to sack three managers in six weeks, finally handing the reins to Miguel Herrera last month for the twogame play-off.
The outspoken manager, who led Club America to a domestic title this year, voiced confidence that his squad can win the return leg in New Zealand on November 20 as well as today’s home tie.
“The first thing we said was that we shouldn’t think about what happened in the past because that’s something we can’t resolve,” Herrera said. “We are going to win in Mexico and we will also seek to win over there (in New Zealand),” he told reporters over the weekend.
Fans have turned on their team, with 60 percent saying in a poll last month that Mexico didn’t deserve to qualify. Experts have warned that missing the World Cup would cost sponsors and broadcasters more than $600-million (about R6,2b).
Herrera has shaken things up since taking over, calling up only players from the domestic league while leaving out European-based stars, including Manchester United’s Javier “Chicharito” Hernandez and Villareal’s Giovani dos Santos.
He said Mexico would seek to exploit New Zealand’s loss of captain Winston Reid, who was ruled out of the play-off with an ankle injury suffered playing for his English Premier League club West Ham.
But New Zealand striker Rory Fallon said the All Whites’ familiarity with the intercontinental play-off system could be to their advantage.
Fallon famously scored the goal against Bahrain in the second leg of their play-off that sent New Zealand to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.
This time, however, the All Whites face a much stronger side that played in 14 of the last 19 World Cups. New Zealand have appeared in only two World Cups: Spain in 1982 and South Africa in 2010.
“Nobody in the world would have anticipated having Mexico in a play-off. We certainly did not,” said New Zealand manager Ricki Herbert.
Herbert said he thought today’s match was “one of the hardest, if not the hardest” New Zealand had ever faced. – Sapa-AFP