Nearsighted

This cartoon ran in Mural today. With the news down in Mexico dominated by the swine flu, Terrazas tried to take a look instead at the national team camp.


Professor Agurire points to a chart that says:
Order
Discipline
Stability
Responsibility
Seriousness
Pride

He asks Tri: "So you really can't see anything?"

Tri responds: "No. The previous process left me myopic."

Aguirre's first roster

Mexico won't play a game anytime soon but that did not prevent Javier Aguirre from calling up some players for a quick training camp.

The team features several youngsters (Edgar Pacheco, Hugo Ayala) and some surprising veterans (Miguel Sabah, Oribe Peralta). Also, it featured no South Americans. The only player not born in Mexico on the roster is Edgar Castillo, and his inclusion has never ruffled any feathers.

The roster:

Goalkeepers: Guillermo Ochoa (America), Jesus Corona (Tecos).

Defenders: Paul Aguilar (Pachuca), Oscar Rojas (America), Hugo Ayala (Atlas), Juan Carlos Valenzuela (America), Edgar Dueñas (Toluca), Imsael Rodriguez (America), Arturo Rivas (Tigres).

Midfielders: Edgar Castillo (America), Fernando Arce (Santos), Francisco Torres (Santos), Luis Miguel Noriega (Puebla), Israel Castro (Pumas), Jose Maria Cardenas (Puebla), Pablo Barrera (Pumas).

Forwards: Carlos Esquivel (Toluca), Edgar Pacheco (Atlas), Nestor Calderon (Toluca), Luis Alonso Sandoval (Monterrey), Miguel Sabah (Morelia), Oribe Pealta (Jaguares).

Aguirre's in charge

Javier Aguirre was officially presented as Mexico manager on Thursday. I wrote up part of my SI.com column on him so I'll save some thoughts for later.

Here's some stories from Goal.com in the meanwhile.

Aguirre said that June 6 will be Mexico's D day.

Some of the many who came out in support of the move were his successor in 2002, Ricardo Lavolpe, as well as a player who earned his first cap under Lavolpe, Andres Guardado.

Here's a cartoon from Mural about the move.


Aguirre sits relaxed in the jeep saying "Calm down, I've come to get aboard the car of optimism" but the driver responds "If we were optimists, we wouldn't have fired Eriksson."

On the brink

At the risk of providing more fluff...

Reforma reported a couple more things; Aguirre will live in Miami and his two main assistants - Mario Carrillo and Manuel Vidrio - will do a bulk of the scouting in person.

Also, three players Javier Aguirre is considering adding to the national team.

- Paul Aguilar of Pachuca. Aguilar was called up for Mexico's friendly against Bolivia last month but has yet to make his international debut. He didn't get into the game. Aguilar plays defense.

- Zinha. Apparently, Zinha will fill the playmaker role for Aguirre - at least, that's what Reforma concludes. They compare players with similar characteristics who have performed that job for Aguirre in his previous four teams: Maxi Rodriguez (Atletico, 06-09); Patxi Puñal (Osasuna, 02-06); Cuauhtemoc Blanco (Mexico 01-02); Gabriel Caballero (Pachuca 98-01).

- Braulio Luna. The veteran midfielder was a part of the 2002 World Cup team under Aguirre, and he also was on the 98 World Cup team under Manuel Lapuente. Luna's enjoyed a bit of a solid and productive career in recent years. He's 34 so there's the age factor, and how much can he really be counted on for the future, but he seems like the perfect Aguirre player - a hard-nosed veteran who can come in and teach the team a thing or two. He might not play 90 minutes every time out but he could be useful.

Aguirre column

I chimed in with my thoughts on the Mexico managerial position for The Press-Enterprise.

And in case you missed it, I also wrote a column on Aguirre for Goal.com.

The one thing I really didn't address in any column is the thought that Aguirre will inspire confidence in the team and that will help improve things. It's another challenge he has, amidst his wealth of challenges. Now, I don't think the fault for Mexico's current state was Sven-Goran Eriksson's alone, and that now Aguirre is in and everything is right with El Tri. It's not as cut-and-dry as that.

But one argument in favor of a 180-degree turnaround from the start seems to be the confidence Aguirre will instill in the players. I think that was one of the biggest arguments in favor of Hugo Sanchez, that players would do anything and everything for him, that they would play with fervor the likes of which hadn't been seen in a long time.

I just don't buy it. It's not as easy as hitting the confidence button and watching the team dominate. It's not. I'm not saying Aguirre won't turn things around, but I just don't think it's going to be easy.

Sven column

I'm away from my computer now but I wanted to post a link to SI.com. I wrote a column on the Sven-Goran Eriksson firing and sort of the overall state of El Tri.

Here's the link to the main soccer page on SI.com. Hopefully my story's up.

If you've been reading my blog, you know where I stand on the issue. Javier Aguirre looks like he's the man, and I didn't really get into that in my column, but anyone who thinks Aguirre is going to be able to flip a switch and have the team firing on all cylinders and having their way with every team from now on is mistaken.

That seemed to have happened in 2001, but the team is much different now, and I talk about that part so read the column to get my thoughts on that aspect.

Aguirre is a good manager but he's spent a lot of time in Europe and one of the complaints about Sven was that he didn't know the league and the players, and Aguirre might not be too familiar with the current league and players. Still, he can probably acclimate himself quicker than Sven. But how much will that really matter? Are there any diamonds-in-the-rough out there that will make an immediate impact? In '01 he lopped some players off the team and some he didn't bring back, including Pavel Pardo.

And also, as happy as everyone is about the possibility of Aguirre coming back, he did have a horrendous loss of his own, the 2-0 defeat at the hands of the US in the World Cup. And remember the little thing about the naturalized players? He kind of started it with Gabriel Caballero. So it's not like he doesn't have his own skeletons.

Anyway, check out the story. And let me know what you think of the move. I'm probably in the minority who doesn't think it was the greatest move.

Sven's out

What began as a leap of faith and turned into a rumor has become reality. Sven-Goran Eriksson is no longer Mexico's manager.

Let's see, Hugo Sanchez - Nov 06 to March 08, Chucho Ramirez - March 08 to June 08; Sven Goran Eriksson - June 08 to April 09....

And you wonder why the team looks like shit...

Gone or not?

Expanding a bit on the story that Mural ran accompanying the cover below, here's a brief translation of the story:

Sven-Goran Eriksson's exit from the national team will be announced on April 27 during the owners' meeting, to give formality to the situation and probably decide his successor.

After the 3-1 loss in Honduras, the pressure became too much for the FMF leadership. The press conference with the manager had just finished and the calls began to put the backup plan in place, the one that federation officials acknowledged having a week ago just in case.

And the time has come. Justino Compean, president of the FMF, asked director of national teams Nestor De La Torre to take the first steps and, in plain view outside the locker room, the ex-vice president of Guadalajara began making phone calls meanwhile the official waited. Sven-Goran was not around at that time.

The rest of the story goes on to talk about how Sven had a talk with the federation, and that after the team bus left the officials continued making calls, and mentions Javier Aguirre and Jose Manuel "Chepo" De La Torre as replacements.

All that seems like a giant leap of faith, to assume that everything that went on after the game would lead anyone to believe that the manger will be gone for sure. Maybe he'll be gone, but it doesn't seem as if that determination was made yet.

Stories are breaking that there will be an emergency meeting today to determine Sven's future, but determining one's future and saying one's future is non-existent are two different things.

Just seems like irresponsible journalism.

Four versus Five

The standings in South America's qualifying table are as follows:

Paraguay 24
Brazil 21
Chile 20
Argentina 19
Uruguay 17
Colombia 14
Ecuador 14
Venezulea 13
Bolivia 12
Peru 7

The top four spots in South America earn a direct berth to South Africa, and right now that would be Paraguay, Brazil, Chile and Argentina.

The fifth-place team, which is Uruguay, would play CONCACAF's fourth-place team in a playoff for another World Cup spot.

The fourth-place team right now is Mexico.

Uruguay-Mexico for a World Cup spot. Yes, there is a long way to go, but that's one possible scenario Mexico would face if El Tri continues to show poorly in qualifying.

Picante analysis

It's only two minutes long but here's some analysis of the Mexico loss from the Futbol Picante guys.

Mexico-Honduras highlights

The camera angle is the exact opposite from what we saw on Telemundo, but here are the goals from Wednesday's Honduras' 3-1 win over Mexico.

The abyss

Mexico's loss to Costa Rica in 2001 was bad, downright terrible for the Mexicans.

But what does rock bottom look like?

Got you covered

Remember to check back on Goal.com for both coverage on Mexico and their qualifier against Honduras and the US national team's game against Trinidad & Tobago.

Goal.com is staffing the latter as Shane Evans is in Tennessee to provide coverage. Hopefully, at least one future US game will feature coverage from yours truly. But let's not get our hopes up quite yet. After all, I might not be able to find my passport.

Castillo speaks

Edgar Castillo answered questions about his missing passport on Tuesday.

More on my own passport plight... I worry about losing my passport so I gave the responsibility of maintaining the passport safe and secure and in a known location to my wife many years ago, after I got the new one, sometime in early '04. I did not want to have the chance to travel and not be able to go because I didn't have my passport.

I hate that feeling, when something tremendously important depends on a document, and I have no idea where that document is. I can imagine what Edgar was going through, and then to have to tell the Mexican Football Federation about losing his passport...

Anyway, I don't know where my passport is but my wife does. Actually, I think it's in a drawer in a file cabinet somewhere, but I trust her more than I trust myself.

Funny thing is, one of the rumors that surfaced was that Castillo's ex-wife, whom he reportedly recently divorced, actually took the passport in question and hid it. That ran in Mural this morning, and while I'm not sure of the validity of it, it's out there.

Hmmm... maybe the other Castillo had a point in the Mexican media getting involved in personal lives... on the other hand, this seems to affect more than just his personal life and more than just himself.

Sven's challenges

Here's an interesting column on SI.com. I didn't write it, but it's on Sven-Goran Eriksson and his challenges with his job as Mexican national team manager.

For those of us who follow Mexican football, it might seem simple enough and a lot of this might be common knowledge, but to a lot of those who don't, this is the kinds of things they don't realize are happening in Mexico. Keep in mind, this was written for World Soccer magazine, so a lot of their readers probably have little or no familiarity with Mexico, so a lot of this may be new to them.

Anyway, though it was worth a read for those trying to familiarize themselves with or get up to speed on Mexico. This was written before the Costa Rica win (it's in the current issue of the magazine).

More on El Tri

I didn't post much on this blog tonight because I was busy updating Goal.com's Mexico page. Check it out for full coverage on Mexico's 2-0 win over Costa Rica.

Mexico wins

The way the game worked out, Costa Rica never really had a shot as Mexico won 2-0.

Here are the highlights with some commentary from the Futbol Picante guys.

A stab or three at a Tri lineup

Well, first here's the preview I wrote for Goal.com and I included my guess at a lineup (not necessarily who I think should start) and here's one of my writers and his stab at a lineup (who he thinks should start.

And here's Futbol Picante. None of us have the same lineup at all.

Media talk

The fallout from the Nery Castillo tirade seems to have been overwhelmingly in favor of Castillo among the supporters. It seems the Mexican media is very low in the minds of many.

Now, I don't know what journalism is like in Mexico and what standards it follows. It's a different game there, so to speak. But the thing that bothers me is this idea that the media should support the national team and should be positive with the national team.

It's not the media's job to support. That's PR, public relations. The media's job is to report on what happened, report the major storylines, the minor storylines and everything in between, to cover a game or event or whatever from as many angles as possible so the reader or viewer or listener or whatever can get the full story.

The media's job is not to support or trash, it is not to give atta-boys or pats on the back, pick-me-up columns or fluff pieces. That's PR, marketing, whatever. Not media. Sure, you cover and deal with players you like on a personal level and other you don't care for on a personal level. But you have to be true to the job and the profession and remain objective. Media members aren't cheerleaders, and it seems that's a major complaint about the Mexican media, that they aren't supporting the national team.

The team has played like shit. What do you want the media to do? You want Mural to run a cover that says "Don't Worry Tri, Next Time You'll Win" if they lose on Saturday? Should that have been the headline following the US-Mexico game?

Now, there is an element of tabloid and sensationalism that goes on there and that part I can't speak about. I despise tabloids in general and if those are the basis of the complaints, I guess I can't really blame them.

Anyway, here's the Futbol Picante crew talking about the Nery situation.

In the news

Nery Castillo had his say on how he feels against the media on Wednesday.

Now, it's the media's turn. Castillo, of course, was the headliner throughout including on the cover of Mural.

"He Goes Crazy" reads the headline.

What good is just a headline, though, without a cartoon to accompany it?


Nery Castillo tries his hand at a piñata. As the Costa Rican player dangles saying "He's peeking! He's peeking!" a startled reporter says "Behind Nery, behind, behind... the target is on the other side."