🇲🇽 Lainez and/or Flores must go to the World Cup
Youngsters not *the* solution for El Tri, but they help PLUS: We stan Costa Rica ahead of the playoff
In just a few weeks, Marcelo Flores has gone from a player whose name only in-the-weeds soccer junkies recognize to one who is cheered by a rowdy crowd as he came in for Mexico against Suriname in the Concacaf Nations League on Saturday.
Flores was cheered even after he had a penalty saved, Mexico’s typically demanding fans recognizing he’d set up the penalty in the first place and he was perhaps the only El Tri attacker playing with a real desire to play vertically.
In his 10-minute cameo in the 3-0 win, the Arsenal academy player
“It hurts to learn,” Flores wrote on social media after the match. Maybe so, and it’s clear he has plenty still to learn. Yet, it’s also clear after Mexico’s two listless summer friendly matches and Saturday’s CNL triumph that Flores and his fellow young attacker Diego Lainez are players Mexico needs at the World Cup in Qatar.