Mexico World Cup 2010 Team Profile

April 9th, 2010 | by: Daryl |

Federacion_Mexicana_Futbol Mexico have been drawn into Group A with France, Uruguay and host nation South Africa. Mexico were knocked out of the past four World Cups in the round of 16, and will be hoping to go one better this time. Presumably. Don’t you hate it when previews say things like that? Of course they hope to go one better than last time. Why would they hope to do worse?

Anyway, please read on for the rest of this Mexico team profile. It gets better from here on out, promise. There’s even video of Cuauhtémoc Blanco making a pass with his butt. If you disagree with any of the below, feel free to call me out in the comments.

Nickname: El Tri (The Three) in reference to the three colours of the Mexican flag.

FIFA World Ranking as of March 31st 2010: #17

Javier-Aguirre-3_1363517 Coach: Not Sven Goran Eriksson. That didn’t go well. The man in charge of Mexico for World Cup 2010 is Javier Aguirre, who was also El Tri coach at World Cup 2002. He went on to successfully manage Osasuna in La Liga and semi-successfully (as in early success, followed by disappointment) managing Atletico Madrid. When Mexico sacked Sven in early 2009, Aguirre was both available and the fairly obvious candidate to rescue Mexico’s World Cup 2010 qualification campaign, which is exactly what he did.

Key Players: Mexico has an encouraging mix of old and young, domestic and European based. At 37 and 36 years old, Cuauhtémoc Blanco and Francisco Palencia are the grand old men of Mexican football, who could very well be joined by younger attacking talents like 21 year old Arsenal striker Carlos Vela, and 19 and 20 year old brothers Jonathan and Gio dos Santos, of Barcelona and Galatasaray respectively. Last but not least, 21 year old striker Javier Hernandez has scored four in four for El Tri at time of writing and will be joining Man Utd once the World Cup is done.

Hard not to get excited about such an abundance of attacking talent, but Mexico have decent defenders too. There’s captain Rafa Marquez of Barcelona for one, as well as the Eredivisie based trio of Carlos Salcido, Francisco Rodríguez and possibly young Héctor Moreno, who if selected will have the security of popular alice-band wearing goalkeeper Meme Ochoa backing them up.

Update: I somehow forgot to mention Andrés Guardado. The 23 year old Deportivo La Coruña midfielder already has close to 50 caps for Mexico, and is blessed with the sort of left foot that gives goalkeepers night terrors.

Player with best YouTube video: That man Cuauhtémoc Blanco knows all the tricks, including the bunny hop, and was making passes with his back (and his butt) long before Zlatan Ibrahimovic ever even thought about it.

Player with best name: Cuauhtémoc Blanco again. Because I still can’t type it without Googling to check the spelling. And even then I only ever find the correct spelling via “Did you mean…”

Player with best nickname: “El Chicharito” (”The Little Pea”) aka Javier Hernandez. His dad was also named Javier Hernandez, and was nicknamed “El Chícharo” (”The Pea”) because he was tiny. When you’re the son of The Pea, that makes you The Little Pea, which is very small indeed.

Qualification: Sven did his best to fail, including losses to USA, Honduras and El Salvador. But Javier Aguirre came in and tidied up the Swedish mess, with Mexico eventually finishing second in the Hexagobal to qualify comfortably.

Interesting: Estadio Azteca in Mexico City holds a ridiculous 105,000 people. Massive.

National Anthem: Himno Nacional Mexicano

More on Mexico’s national anthem here.

Kit: Green shirt, white shorts, white socks. Home shirt looks like this:
mexico-home-2

Full review here, or buy your Mexico jersey from our store.

World Cup History:
1930 – First Round
1950 – First Round
1954 – First Round (you see a pattern yet?)
1958 – First Round
1962 – First Round (how about now?)
1966 – First Round
1970 – Quarter-Finals
1978 – First Round
1986 – Quarter-Finals
1994 – Second Round
1998 – Second Round
2002 – Second Round
2006 – Second Round

Expectations: Since Mexico has made it to the Second Round of the past four World Cups, I assume they’re expecting to at least match that achievement in South Africa.

Squad: TBA

Blog: Andrea and Al are covering El Tri on the Mexico blog.

- More World Cup 2010 Team Profiles.

Mexico World Cup Guide

International Football News – World Cup Blog RSS Feed

http://the6-yardbox.blogspot.com/ Pablo

I agree that Javier el chicharito Hernandez is the player to watch. Guardado is their best midfielder and Marquez is the kind of captain that will marshall the backline
http://www.worldcupblog.org Daryl

Andrés Guardado definitely deserved a mention as one of Mexico’s key players. The Deportivo La Coruña mid is only 23, but already has nearly 50 caps for Mexico.
tito

Why did they get rid of LaVolpe? He had them playing the best I’d ever seen and they came *that* close to knocking out Argentina in 2006. (In fact, they pushed them so hard that Argentina had nothing left in the tank to face a Germany they should have beaten)
http://www.worldcupblog.org Daryl

I think he had a volatile relationship with the Mexican federation, press, and certain players, so once his contract was up after World Cup 2006, all parties were happy for him to move on.
http://www.worldcupblog.org Daryl

And by “certain players” I pretty much mean Blanco:

http://www.soccer.com/blog/2006/07/cuauhtemoc_blanco_blasts_la_vo.blog
tito

Thanks. Funny how that works. Seems to me he was their best manager by far in the last 20 years.
OhYes

Lavolpe was pretty awesome I miss him. :(

Watching Blanco’s ass/back passes in real time is pretty fun, but watching them one after the other in a youtube video is hilarious. I was laughing hysterically throughout that whole vid.

What I really wanna see in Mexico’s world cup is Jonathan Dos Santos! I think he is doing very well in Barcelona and has an excellent long shot, something Mexico needs imo.
alex

tito – mexico was overall played better than argentina, if it wasnt for maxi’s great goal, mexico should of beat argentina,

lavolpe (from argentina) played his cards right, saved guardado for the argentina, and he ran circles around them, la volpe spoke his mind, and didnt take no shit from anyone, thats why he was axed right after the world cup, even tho, they proved that they can compete with the best,

ps – he also has a great confed cup the year before the world cup
Oc

I’m mexican and from my humbly point of view LaVolpe is a huge fraud. He was very well paid, and he promised a fifth game in the world cup. Dindt get it. He left out the team the very best player by that time (Cuauhtémoc), and instead he took his son in law, that was absolutely useful. Lavolpe is a big egocentrical and divided the dressing room. Was despotic, dictatorial, and stupid. Very good he went away.
pencho15

You assume correctly about our expectations, not advancing into the second round would be a failure, and our dream as a team would be to reach the fifth match and reach the quarter finals for the first time outside our country, many people think we can do it, but many more have serious doubts.
As for me, I was quite surprised when we were draw alongside South Africa since hosts always got easy groups and I didn’t consider Mexico an easy rival, so I tought this can be very good or very bad, when the group was completed with France my tought was this is very bad, I have no doubts about South Africa advancing as hosts always do (even if they must be helped like Spain in 82 or South Korea in the knockout stages of 2002) that means there is one place in the second round left and that we have to beat France to obtain it, as much as I would love to see the french losing all their matches due to the way they qualified, they are here, they are strong and they are the favorites of the group, so equling our result in the previous world cups will be hard.
My main reason to have hopes is our manager Aguirre whom I consider very capable to take the best of the teams he directs, his previous time with Mexico was very good (except for the sad ending against the United States) hopefully that experience and his years in Europe will help him to make this team a great contender.
marc

Francisco Palencia didn’t make the 17-man domestic league pre-World Cup roster for the training camp/friendlies, which is to say: he ain’t goin’ to South Africa.

http://www.goal.com/en-us/news/67/world-cup/2010/03/31/1857722/goalcommentary-breaking-down-mexicos-17

if you want to keep the “mixture of young and old” motif, mention Oscar “El Conejo” Pérez- the 37-year-old third-string goalkeeper, who will be participating in his third World Cup.
http://www.worldcupblog.org Daryl

That’s a shame marc, but I guess not a huge surprise given the amount of attacking talent.

Big question: is Blanco assured of a place this time? Would be nice to see him have his swansong, especially after missing out in 2006.
Mexicosiemprefiel

alineacion para el mundial. (portero) Ochoa, (defensa)Salcido, Magallon, Maza, Juarez, (medio) Marquez en el medio, guardado y gio laterales, Cuau centro delantero, Vela y chicharito adelante. que piensan?
Giampiero

I doubt Ochoa will start given how much Aguirre seems to prefer Michel
Ernie

aguirre wont leave off torrado from the lineup.. i would like the defense to be salcido marquez maza marquez and juarez…u guys think aguirre is taking jonathan dos santos to the world cup?
Ernie

oops said marquez twice! sorry bout that!