Facing off with a Croatian team missing a number of stars, Mexico came out flat on Tuesday night.
A second half penalty proved enough for shorthanded Croatia, who toppled Mexico, 1-0, at AT&T Stadium. The result comes just days after Mexico cruised past Iceland, 3-0.
While the loss will sting, the main takeaway for Mexico involved injuries. Nestor Araujo was stretchered off in the 15th minute, providing plenty of concern for El Tri on a night where the team looked far from ready for the World Cup.
Featuring what was pretty close to a full-strength squad, Mexico sputtered several times in front of goal with Carlos Vela and Javier ‘Chicahrito’ Hernandez generating first half chances. However, it was Ivan Rakitic that tucked away his penalty kick following a foul on Miguel Layun.
Croatia was playing without six projected starters in Luka Modric, Mario Mandzukic, Ivan Perisic, Marcelo Brozovic, Danijel Subasic and Nikola Kalinic.
Next up for El Tri is a match against Wales on May 28.
The thing I find annoying is that Fox Sports assumes that Mexico is the ‘second team’ for US soccer fans and that we care how they do. They’re not and I don’t. And we’re going to have to endure endless promotion for ‘El Tri’ over the next few months….
You may not but Fox sports does not care. Fox is a business and they know that they will get more business following Mexico than the USA as that is probably their biggest market at least for soccer.
Usa whit the trio of player,Will Trap,Tyler Adamd,and Marko Delgado were nightmare
in the field against Paraguay,not a bad team,was a good and profesional club,and Mexico
had a lousy perfomence,it is true you can see it
Now i expected Usa has a better calification in the Fifa better countries
They did start a few inexperienced players in Jorge Hernandez, Omar Govea and Rodolfo Pizarro. During the match they lost defender Nestor Araujo to injury, his replacement Diego Reyes was injured later and replaced by Carlos Salcedo who was also taken out. Araujo and Salcedo are now in danger of missing the world cup. Midfielder Hector Herrera was previously sent home for injury and the Dos Santos brothers were both ruled out because of injuries ( Jonathan could have filled in for Hector ). Tecatito Corona also has an ankle problem. Team did look very disjointed though.
Complain about facing weakened Croatian squad, then lose to them. Some things never change.
Like not going to the world cup. That will never change.
Someone’s a little touchy about a loss to a crap team, eh Jeff…? Chin up, amigo.
The U.S. isn’t a soccer-first country. Not even close. Missed the WC? Sucks, but w/e, and I’m a big soccer fan.
Mexico is though. Just imagine if there’s no San Zusi four years ago.
I found it interesting that on the Iceland FA Twittter account, they got a boatload of tweets from Mexican fans calling them crap, etc. after the match. Yesterday, Peruvian fans were wishing them nothing but luck going forward. Small sample, sure, but illustrated the pettiness and fragile ego of the Mexican fanbase. They know they should be a lot more successful than they are.
Experimenting with a 3-4-3 lineup, suffering two injuries during the game, and not having a number of key starters also due to injury against a Croatian team that, while not having their starting lineup, still had the likes of Rakitic from Barcelona playing. And they lose 1-0 with the lone goal arriving via a penalty. Not a bad result, especially considering its a WC warm up. So, crap team? Croatia is also going to the WC. This article is clearly written by someone equally hurt by the fact that USA’s rival is going to the WC and the US missed its chance by losing to T&T… a team that this under-strength Croatian team would’ve beaten handily. But not the US. Chin up, amigos.
And you needn’t be a soccer-first country to be able to beat T&T. Come on. A country of 300+ million can’t muster a starting 11 to take on T&T?!?!? A country of 1.3 million? Wow. Just, wow.