Team Mexico preparing for the noise of summer
The Mexican national team played 15 games last year.
It could play as many as 17 in a 60-day span beginning late next month, a jam-packed schedule that includes four friendlies, two World Cup qualifiers and two tournaments — the Confederations Cup in Russia and the CONCACAF Gold Cup in the U.S.
If Mexico reaches the semifinals of both events, it will play in three countries, 14 cities, six states and four federal districts of Russia in two months. Most airline pilots don’t cover that much territory in so short a time.
But if the itinerary is a travel agent’s worst nightmare, for Mexico coach Juan Carlos Osorio it’s something else.
“It’s a great opportunity,” he said over breakfast last week.
Because the games are so tightly bunched — the final two friendlies will be played before the Confederations Cup has ended — Mexico will need two full teams and at least 50 players to get through it all. And that will force the coaching staff to call up a number of players who might never have gotten a chance under normal circumstances.
“We have to consolidate new players. And the way we do that is [by] giving them the opportunity,” said Osorio, who has given a dozen players — among them Hirving Lozano, Jesus Gallardo and Orbelin Pineda — their national team debuts in the last year.
“We need to give our young players a chance to compete against the best and become better,” the coach said.
That fits nicely with Osorio’s larger strategy to build depth and engender competition within a national team that has traditionally had little of either. Consider that Mexico, under Miguel Herrera, used the same lineup for all three group-play games in the 2014 World Cup, then made one change in the knockout round, and only because midfielder Jose Juan Vazquez was lost to suspension.
Osorio, on the other hand, prefers to rotate players in and out, forcing them to battle for playing time. He used a different lineup in each of Mexico’s last four World Cup qualifiers.
“That’s the strength of this team now,” said Osorio, 55, whose roster includes 13 players from top European clubs and six others he says are good enough to play there.
That depth arguably makes this Mexican team the best ever, while Osorio, with only one loss in his first 20 games, is off to the best start of any national team coach ever. But as just the second foreigner since 1997 to coach more than 13 games for El Tri, the Colombian has little room for error with Mexico’s famously passionate and fickle fans.
“At this level you are three defeats away from crisis,” he said. “In Mexico you are two. Or even one. It’s an experience that is unique.”
Last summer, after Mexico suffered a humiliating 7-0 loss to Chile in the Copa America quarterfinals, fans demanded Osorio be fired — never mind the fact that it remains his only loss.
“There is probably no other country in the world — maybe Brazil or Argentina — that demands so much and [where] everybody has an opinion. And they know better than me,” said Osorio, whose coaching resume includes stops in the English Premier League, Mexico’s La Liga and Brazil’s Serie A, and three tours each in Colombia and MLS, the latter a place to which he’d like to return someday.
That pressure will only grow over the next 15 months, a period that begins with a May 27 friendly against Croatia at the Coliseum and one Osorio hopes will end with a long run in next summer’s World Cup.
Twice Mexico has made it to the quarterfinals of a World Cup, the last trip coming in 1986. And with the core of this year’s team entering their 30s before the next World Cup ends, the 2018 tournament in Russia may be the last chance for those players to make some history of their own.
“That generation, most of them know that this is their last World Cup,” said Santiago Banos, director of national teams for the Mexican soccer federation.
Making it to Russia seems assured. The only unbeaten team in CONCACAF qualifying, Mexico leads the six-team competition by three points after four games and can all but clinch a spot in next summer’s tournament with victories over Honduras and the U.S. in June.
That’s the prize Osorio wants next.
“Our main objective is still the same: to qualify for the World Cup,” he said. “We think we have a great chance to take a good step forward.”
To achieve that, Mexico will use its “A” team in the two qualifiers and in the Confederations Cup, a kind of World Cup dress rehearsal, while a “B” team will play in the four friendlies and the Gold Cup, which for Mexico begins July 9 in San Diego.
That means Javier “Chicharito” Hernandez, Miguel Layun and Carlos Vela won’t be at the Coliseum next month, but Mexico’s next generation probably will be.
“It is a unique situation and perhaps a tricky one,” said Osorio, who plans to coach 15 of the possible 17 games Mexico will play in May, June and July. “[But] there is no choice.”
There is, however, opportunity.
“We keep giving opportunities to new players. The next game means so much to them,” Osorio said. “We always say, ‘Who will this game benefit the most?’ and ‘Who is going to take this game as probably the most important game of their life?’
“And we try to select the team based on that.”