Monday, June 14, 2010

The World Cup: Hope Springs Eternal in Mexico's Breast

By Patrick Corcoran

I would love to devote this column to the idea that while Mexico is not likely to bring home the World Cup bacon, if they can somehow put it all together and win the first trophy in the country's history it would be the sort of transcendent national moment that placed all of the nation's problems squarely in the rearview mirror, and put Mexico on the path to prosperity.

Or something like that. 

Unfortunately, that would be a silly column indeed; Mexico is only slightly more likely to win the World Cup than I am to make the team in 2014, and even if that miracle did come to pass, Mexico's lengthy catalogue of political, economic, and security problems would be no shorter.

Nonetheless, the World Cup is such a significant event that a successful tournament will provide an immeasurable boost to the national self-esteem, a substance that has been disappearing with the pace of the Amazon rain forest in recent years.

An erratic and uncertain qualification didn't help in this regard. After firing Hugo Sánchez as the national team coach in 2008, Mexico entrusted its place in South Africa to Sven-Goran Eriksson. The Swedish boss was an abject failure from day one, a fact that surprises no one who followed his tenure with England earlier this decade. He alienated one of the most beloved Mexican stars (Cuauhtémoc Blanco), he filled the team with naturalized citizens, and he failed to harness precocious talents like Giovani dos Santos and Carlos Vela.

And, most importantly, he failed to win.

Under Eriksson, El Tri, as the national team is universally known, never won a qualifier on foreign turf, picking up only a point in five tries. Three games (out of ten) into the final round, Mexico was on pace to miss out on its first tourney since 1990, which is to say that disaster loomed, so Eriksson was shown the door. He later blamed politics for his failures, demonstrating that while he was unable to make it in Mexico he did pick up a habit or two from his temporarily adopted country. 

Coming in to replace Eriksson was Javier Aguirre, an ex-Mexican national teamer coming off a stint coaching Atlético de Madrid, one of the celebrated Spanish league's more storied franchises. Despite a shaky opening act (he lost his first qualifier at the helm, and was suspended a month later during the Gold Cup when he gently kicked a Panamanian player running along the sidelines), Aguirre righted the ship soon enough: Mexico beat the US in the famed Estadio Azteca, blitzed Costa Rica in San Jose, and eventually muscled their way into second place in the qualifying group.

All was right in the world. 

El Tri followed their qualification with twelve matches in 2010 before arriving in South Africa, roughly double the average nation's workload. The team closed out their prep session with matches against European heavyweights England, Holland, and Italy, dominating the latter, the defending World Cup champs, in a 2-1 victory on June 3.

So Mexico enters the tourney on something of a wave of momentum, but of course neither the win over Italy nor the losses to Holland or England mean much of anything now that the event has begun. Mexican attention is now squarely on its group-stage opponents: South Africa [see penultimate paragraph], France [6/17], and Uruguay [6/22].

This is a threesome that provides neither gimmie matches nor impossible foes. Any result is conceivable: if Mexico performs up to its potential, it could certainly come away undefeated. The question is, which Mexico will show up? Will it be the team that outclassed the defending champs? Or will it be el Tri that can’t convert its chances, suffers from sudden defensive lapses, and sinks to defeats or ties against clearly overmatched opponents?

Despite the opening match (although it dominated possession and peppered the South African goalie with shots for 90 minutes, Mexico needed a late goal to slip away with a tie), Mexicans are clearly optimistic that it will be the former: a pre-World Cup poll by Mitofsky shows that nearly a quarter of the respondents are expecting a semifinal finish from the national team, a feat never before accomplished. Somehow, nearly a tenth of those polled, dreamers all, forecast a World Cup victory.

If that happens, what a fantastic moment that would be for a nation that has seemed on the ropes for an eternity. If it doesn’t, well, no sane person expected it to, and we also have the consolation that sports don’t really matter. And thankfully, Mexico only has to wait another four years for the next installment. Hopefully, at that point an athletic boost to the national self-esteem will no longer seem so necessary.

——————————

Patrick Corcoran (corcoran25@hotmail.com) is a writer who resides in Torreón, Coahuila.  He blogs at Gancho (http://www.ganchoblog.blogspot.com/).