🇲🇽 - So, how did Haiti's U-23s end up playing a bunch of Mexico fans?
The story behind the strangest friendly of the year + Concacaf WCQ updates
The pandemic has required international teams to get creative with their international friendly matches. Whether it’s top Concacaf teams playing each other in Austria, Central American squads crossing the border for a midweek game at a regional rival, Jamaica doubling up against Saudi Arabia or Costa Rica playing a non-FIFA side, teams haven’t found it easy to get good competition in the last year.
So it wasn’t entirely surprising to see the news last week that Haiti’s U-23 was preparing for Olympic qualification by facing a team the Haitian press was calling Mexique Amateur. When the young Haitians won 15-0, though, it drew more attention. The biggest question? Who the hell were these Mexican amateurs, and how did they end up in Port-au-Prince?
It turned out to be the Seleccion Mexicana de Aficionados, a group of fans organized by a San Diego-based El Tri supporter named Miguel Nieto. The team was born out of a group that competed at previous fan tournaments, including a mini-World Cup that took place in Russia in 2018 at which Mexico finished third.
(As part of a commercial partnership my media outlet had at the time I got sent out to cover a fan match between Mexico and Germany before doing any official games and mostly ended up taking pictures of a Joachim Low impersonator, but that’s another story)
Since Russia, the SMA has played other groups of fans, including a trip to Barcelona in 2019 to play a Catalonian team plus frequent games against immigrant communities in Mexico. Nieto felt the next logical step in the group’s growth was to book a friendly match against a team actually made up of professionals.
“In 2021, I decided to take it to the next level, which was going to visit a professional national team and that’s how the game against Haiti came about,” Nieto told me in a phone call this week.
As it happens, the link came thanks to Nieto using social media to contact a former Haiti national team player.
“I contacted Alain Vubert,” Nieto said. “Alain is the famous Haitian player who played in 2008 Mexico vs. Haiti in an Olympic qualification game. He’s known as ‘the only Haitian in the area’ I contacted him via Facebook six months ago and chatted with him.”
I need to interrupt Nieto’s story here to note that ‘famous’ may be a bit of a charitable description for Vubert, who earned a few dozen caps for the senior team and was part of a handful of CFU Club Championship winning teams.
Nevertheless, Vubert’s defensive action in the dying moments of Mexico and Haiti’s group stage game in 2008 Olympic qualification tournament and the call of (truly) famous commentator Christian Martinoli do resonate more in Mexico than even in Haiti. It’s anecdotal evidence, but Vubert has a Wikipedia page in Spanish but not one in English, French or Creole.
With El Tri missing chance after chance and in need of a better goal difference than Canada to advance to the next stage, Vubert’s success despite being 1-on-5 distilled Mexico’s growing frustration as Hugo Sanchez’s side ultimately fell a goal short.
Nieto and Vubert got to chatting over Facebook with Nieto eventually asking if the former player could put him in touch with a contact at the Haitian federation. Vubert agreed.
“After that, I negotiated, and Haiti wasn’t in conditions to tell us no because the socioeconomic and political situation isn’t the best, so they haven’t had a team come to play them in I don’t know how long,” Nieto said. “I convinced them little by little that despite the fact that we’re amateurs, we still could give them a fight.
“They were the favorites on paper, but we convinced them it was good for them because they’d know how the Mexican is going to play ahead of the Olympic qualification tournament. I convinced them it was the best option because we weren’t going to charge them anything, hotel, flight, anything, it was all on our account.”
In addition to the quick trip to Haiti, a country whose historic struggles are well documented but currently is in another moment of political and social upheaval, that meant getting to Miami for one of two flights currently going to the Haitian capital.
Since the team paid its own way, the situation is not ideal in Haiti and the global pandemic continues, Nieto said he wasn’t able to count on the full squad he usually does. An important base of players in Mexico City opted to stay home rather than make the journey, and other regulars also were unable to join.
Still, the team looked forward to the experience, and the trip wasn’t without its high points.
“The arrival they gave us was more than I expected,” Nieto said. “The Minister of Defense and Minister of Sport welcomed us, they gave us a military escort to our hotel and the Mexican ambassador (to Haiti) was there welcoming us. I felt very thankful to the Haitian people because they welcomed us with open arms.”
To recap, a team of average Mexico fans flew into Miami on Thursday, then to Haiti on Friday. They played the match Saturday and flew out Sunday.
Mexican fans and members of the press were not necessarily thrilled to be represented by a squad run off the field by Haiti. Even though the result will likely be much different if the Haiti U-23 gets past its group and plays its actual Mexican counterpart this month, Nieto and his crew got a fair bit of criticism and attacks in the press. That frustrated Neito, but he took it in stride.
“Mexicans are very patriotic, so people are going to take seeing a 15-0 result very badly, and, honestly, it’s understandable,” he said. “No fan of any country wants to see their team lose, much less like that. But they have to understand that we aren’t professional players.
“Yes, some of us play as amateurs or in kickarounds, on the beach, Futbol 7, indoor, in the parks. We’ve got a bit of quality, but it’s not comparable with a professional. I think the word ‘fan’ should say a lot. I feel that, while it was rough, the criticism was expected, but after I think people understood it’s a very amateur national team with a lot of absences.”
The result hasn’t deterred Nieto and his crew either. He’s working on playing another official match with a sanctioned national team and also looking toward Qatar when another Fan World Cup will take place.
Until then, he and his buddies are among a very select few who can say they flew into Port-au-Prince to play an official match against some of Haiti’s rising stars.
World Cup qualification update
World Cup qualification won’t be happening in CONMEBOL this month, largely because of the inability to get players based in Europe back to their leagues without mandatory quarantines with the added complication that most countries (including Colombia who Brazil was schedule to visit) will not welcome a flight from Brazil.
Qualifiers in Concacaf, however, are set to continue on. Only Panama, which already had moved their home match to the Dominican Republic because of logistical issues, Guyana, which planned to host but now has moved its home game this window to the DR, and Suriname, whose largely Netherlands-based squad should be able to get back without too much trouble, are on the UK’s ‘red list’ of countries where a 14-day quarantine will be mandated upon return.
It’ll will be great to see soccer in this region again, but of course it’s still a shame many teams have had to move their games to neutral sites. Hopefully as soon as June it’s safe not only to conduct international sport in a way similar to what we’ve gotten used to but also with fans in the stands once again.
One to keep an eye on is Saint Lucia. I’ve heard rumblings that they may be looking to postpone all their matches until June. The Concacaf Nations League has given lots of Caribbean federations something to build on and looks to be limiting the number of countries who will get a ‘Did Not Enter” on their Wikipedia page next to the 2022 World Cup, even despite the extremely difficult logistics that go in to playing during a pandemic.
We’ll have to see if St. Lucia is able to postpone or if matches against Nicaragua and Haiti go down as forfeits - or, of course, if the rumblings are totally wrong and St. Lucia is balling out this month. There also could be other teams in the same situation yet to come to light.
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Lots of stuff coming next week, as qualification quickly approaches and Concacaf Champions League closely follows. Tell a friend about the newsletter because it’s gonna be good.
That Haiti-Mexico Olympic Qualifier is one of the ultimate examples of Concacafing...