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Mexico to honor Olympic gold medal team prior to U.S. friendly at Azteca

MexicoGold (Reuters Pictures)

If Terrence Boyd, Sean Johnson, Joe Corona or Brek Shea needed a reminder of what they potentially missed out on by not getting a chance to compete in the Olympics, they will get as close a look as they will possibly want.

Mexico will honor its Olympic gold medal winning team at halftime of the U.S. men's national team's friendly against El Tri in a ceremony at Estadio Azteca Wednesday night, according to the Mexican federation. Mexico captured its first Olympic gold medal by defeating Brazil 2-1 to add to the country's recent accolades on the international level.

Boyd, Johnson, Corona and Shea are the four players on the current U.S. roster who participated in the futile U.S. Olympic qualifying effort. Jurgen Klinsmann addressed the Mexican Olympic victory in his comments to the media Sunday, putting it in context and perspective for the generation of U.S. players who did not get a chance to compete on that stage. 

"After the disappointment of the Olympics, we told these players that your path will be much tougher than you thought it would be because you’re missing out on one of the biggest opportunities of your lifetime – an Olympics," Klinsmann said. "For these kids watching Mexico win the gold medal brought them some tears possibly. What we also told them was when you fall down, you’ve got to get back up and fight your way back."

What do you think of this development?

Share your thoughts below. 

Comments

  1. No problem, your apology is accepted. Rivalry games are different from normal games and there are certain things that teams don’t normally do in front of their rivals unless they want to rub it in.

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  2. Many Mexican fans are classless, but not all. Spilt beer and all that other junk lands on Mexico fans too. It angers us too.
    As for this game and football in the US in general. This only means something to US soccer fans. It’s means nothing to anyone else in the country. Once when I was in Chicago, the Fire held a community event where most of the employees said that soccer meant nothing to them until they started working there. It was nuts! That would not happen in Mexico or many places around the world. But, it’s understandable, the US is a power house in so many sports and they get so much money and attention, that soccer may never be meaningful. Look at the medal count. That’s dominance, but I digress. The day I see little kids (outside of Latino and Mexican communities in the US) playing pick up games with improvised goals of sticks, rocks or boxes, blocking street traffic or playing on a small patch of grass with a crappy, old ball is the day I know football has a firm root in the culture and deserves to rise with the other sports…until then, this seems like an harried chase for a prize most Americans don’t even care about — the World Cup. Take a random poll at your local grocery– ask people who Klinsmann is, and I bet you’ll get blank stares.

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  3. It’s got little to do with standards.

    I simply don’t see how you even reached the point where Mexico celebrating their gold medal during the game on wednesday can be classified as “arrogant or classless.”

    I apologize for my comment, I certainly had no intention of offending you.

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  4. Fortunate, get over it. People have different standards and expectations. Mine happen to be different from yours. People can disagree about things without being rude to each other.

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  5. I don’t know about that, Chuck. Normally, I would agree that a friendly win would not qualify as a miracle. But this is Mexico in Mexico City with a young roster lacking several A-team members and seems to be a heck of a lot of buzz and anticipation for this one and, although only a friendly, a win this time hit the spot and would no doubt be extremely satisfying.

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  6. I guess you didn’t get enough hugs as a kid if you think that’s “arrogant and classless”

    If the game were being held in the US and the FMF flew their Olympic team to the US and asked the USSF and SUM to allow a half time ceremony you might have a point.

    Otherwise you’re grasping at straws and coming off as insecure and lacking common sense.

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  7. Let me explain. Mexico’s U23 team already had a gold medal award ceremony in London and I am sure there was penty of celebration both in London and back at home in connection with their win. However, inviting your biggest rival for a friendly game and arranging for a big celebration in front of them is arrogant and classless.

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  8. The MofMC needs to happen in a quialifier, preferably us eliminating them from WC or at least sending them to repechage.

    A friendly would feel nice but not quite satisfying.

    After all, those “don’t count” :/

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  9. I would love to go down to Mexico to watch this match. But, I really don’t want to get bombarded with cups of urine, vomit and beer.

    Mexican soccer fans are classless. And, that holds true for games held in the USA. I was pelted with beer when the US scored in Pasadena.

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  10. hahaha i think this is fantastic. i also think it could (but probably not) hurt mexico. i said before the mex/bra game that brazil was over confident and had too much pressure from the media back in brazil. it was good for mexican to be the underdog.

    while i highly doubt that’ll happen at azteca, it could backfire and motivate the US even more.

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  11. LOL

    How do you call this a rival when more people show up when the US plays against Brazil and Argentina in friendlies

    The last time US played mexico in philadelphia, there was 28,000 people

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  12. I think you are overreacting. Let’s not act as if Mexico is a soccer powerhouse like Spain. Nigeria and Cameroon won the Olympics before Mexico did (beating Spain and Argentina in the finals), but their Olympic victories did not result in dominance at the WCs. Our U23 team beat Mexico’s U23 team convincingly prior to the Olympic qualifiers so the gap is not as wide as it seems. Failing to qualify is a setback for our U23 program and, as much as it sucks, it is not the end of the world. Germany, France, Italy and Netherlands did not qualify. Spain, qualified, but failed to score a single goal and finished in the last place in its group (behind Morocco, Honduras and Japan). Does it mean that we should write off Spain, Germany, France and Italy? Congrats to Mexico on the win, but let’s keep things in prospective.

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  13. The US has never won a Gold Cup outside of the US. We also finished fist in WCQs in 2006 and bombed out in the group stages.

    I don’t care if we finish third in WCQs, I want to see us show progress but continuosly getting out of our group in every WC.

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  14. Hopefully, our boys will applaud politely, congratulate the El Tri players, and then beat the crap out of the arrogant and classless hosts. The odds are not in our favor, but the boys have a chance to break the Azteca curse and ruin Mexico’s celebration.

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  15. Mexico has had superior talent for decades…and yet the US has won Gold Cup after Gold Cup and first place in Concacaf qualifying.

    The “golden generation” tag is nice but when these two nations play, all bets are off.

    Alan Gordon not included…

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  16. You just knew this was coming.

    Clever move by Mexico and I don’t blame them at all. Victory of winning Gold tastes so much sweeter to celebrate in front of your biggest rival…who, of course, didn’t even qualify.

    Well played, Mexico.

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  17. I’m not neccessarily sticking up for elgringorico, but it is interesting that JK’s remarks seem to put all of the blame on the players. Seems to me that both he and Porter should be taking at least some of the responsibility for not qualifying…

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  18. Yep it’s going to be crazy, but you know what this may just fire up our own guys as well. If Klinsmann put’s out the right starting 11 I think the U.S. will be able to compete pretty well.

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  19. Good for Mexico. This generation of Mexican players is more talented and positive than the previous…Great competition for the U.S.

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  20. boyd, shea, corona and others seem like the type that will get fired up by this moment. I hope this pushes them in the right way and makes them play better.

    On paper i wouldn’t give the US a shot but we have seen it before when arrogance goes up against determination.

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  21. Mexico coming on a golden generation as USA struggles to find its identity. This rivalry could be lopsided for years to come.

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  22. I was torn about Mexico winning gold. Part of me wanted them to win as it might make the US push harder as their chief rival just won a major tournament, that it would add fire to Team USA to become better than Mexico. The other part of me really dislikes Mexico (as to the rivalry) and I wanted them to lose, plus I like Brazil and pull for them in most tournaments after the US has bailed out.

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  23. As if playing Mexico at Azteca isn’t intimidating enough, now they’re going to make the U.S. watch a ceremony reminding us that they are Olympic champions and honoring how good they are.

    I have a feeling we are looking at a loss greater than any in the last fifteen years.

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  24. “it’s just a friendly, it’s just a friendly”, say it over and over to yourselves in 2nd half as we are having our rear-ends handed to us.

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  25. We can expect El Tri to come out more fired up than ever. We’ve got to stop them in their tracks. Despite that it’s only a friendly, a win here would slow them down. Let’s go boys!

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  26. This match is going to be a victory lap for Mexico. Our defense is going to get run over, especially if we try to be daring and attack with numbers.

    I’ll be shocked if the game stays competitive.

    Mexico 4 – 1 USA

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