🇲🇽 Mexico Miercoles: That El Tri spat & the Liga MX playoffs
I know it's not Monday. Here's the newsletter anyway.
Continued thanks for your patience as I work out the newsletter schedule alongside my full-time role with USA Today - plus work through a few real-life things that altered my schedule.
Recently, I wrote about the #SaveTheCaps movement’s ties to the NASL Whitecaps, what the unveiling of the Cobi Jones statue means to the USMNT legend & how he accepted the role as an African-American trailblazer. I also delivered the news about the call-ups for the Mexico national team’s weird World Cup camp and spoke with Weston McKennie about his versatility and his relationship with U.S. manager Mauricio Pochettino.
Also, I chronicled the chaotic 24 hours when we thought Alexis Vega and Jesus Gallardo might get to play the CCC semifinal second leg with Toluca, only for Mexico to threaten its players with getting left off the World Cup roster if they didn’t turn up.
Like basically any outlet I’ve come into contact with, there’s the constant push-pull of writing about the biggest things happening in soccer, many of them taking place in Europe and finding unique stories from our own region. Your clicks on local soccer coverage will help me do more of it!
OK, let’s get to the matches:
América rallies to draw Pumas, but did they break the rules?
Club América looked absolutely toast. Dead. They say, 1, 2, 3, Cancun in the NBA, but Mexican players probably go somewhere else since they do Cancun for preseason sometimes anyway. Wherever it was, América’s tickets looked booked.
Pumas had controlled the match, only for a pair of penalties - one converted by Henry Martin, one by Alejandro Zendejas - sending the series over to the UNAM campus tied. I found one of the penalties to be harsh and the other to be somewhat obvious, but this wasn’t a case of fans being able to complain about América being gifted phantom penalties. There were incidents. The whistle blew. And the series came back to life.
“What I can say is there was just one team in the stadium, and it was named Pumas,” Pumas boss Efrain Juarez said with a wink after.
Those are the type of words he’ll need to back up in the second leg.
All the noise around the Mexico national team meant the noise around América’s possible lineup violation was quieted. It never seemed likely to change anything, but Pumas filed an official protest about América putting a player back on the field after he was replaced. The change happened when América was preparing three changes at the hour mark - only for center back Sebastián Cáceres to be forced off the field with concussion symptoms. As the changes already had started, América kept center back Miguel Vázquez on - but had he left the field?
You can see the second-by-second in the ESPN report above, but overall I think the concussion caused enough confusion (and should be taken seriously) that nobody did anything unethical. The referee committee said the referees themselves had made a mistake in the situation, with América fined but not punished by the result being invalidated.
Brunetta bosses second half as Tigres turn things around
Whether or not you have sympathy for Chivas, the Guadalajara side truly has been the hardest hit by the Mexico call-ups. Despite that, it was a decent start for Gabriel Milito’s side, a team that had been by far the most impressive for most of the regular season.
It was not a decent finish. Juan Brunetta set up Jesus Angulo to tie the score just before the halftime break then scored one of his own. Just like in Tuesday’s Concacaf Champions Cup match, 21-year-old Diego “Chicha” Sánchez was a shot in the arm for Guido Pizarro’s side, scoring a third goal and the series heads to Guadalajara with Tigres up a pair of goals.
“We knew the potential our team had, but there have been 90 minutes,” Pizarro said after the game. “We can’t take our focus off, now Tuesday, then think about the second leg. We haven’t won anything.”
Ebere the hero as Cruz Azul takes the lead
The playoffs sometimes require a different player than usual to step up, and for Cruz Azul in the first leg that was Christian Ebere.
The Nigerian forward had scored one goal for Cruz Azul since arriving in the winter but doubled that total with a goal from the run of play and another from the penalty spot.
It sends the series to the Azteca with La Maquina holding an edge - not nothing against a team with a defense as stingy as Atlas’.
Toluca not kidding about that CCC focus
Even without Vega or Gallardo, Toluca manager Antonio Mohamed opted to sit top scorer Paulinho until the 60th minute, keeping the Portuguese forward fresh for tonight’s Concacaf Champions Cup match against LAFC.
“We’ve been very clear. Since July, we’ve said we have a very clear top goal, which is Concacaf. We played nine games in the tournament with an alternate team,” Mohamed said after the game. “The message was very clear, and that’s how it was.
“Today, we tried to protect people as well who have been tired, have knocks. We hope to get them back Wednesday, which is the top goal we have. Obviously we wanted to win but came up against a great opponent who set up well and beat us well. But our goal has been clear from the first moment.”
Pachuca is quietly a team in a great position - not just because of the 8th-minute goal from Enner Valencia that allowed it to sit back and frustrate Toluca the rest of the match as they conceded possession to the Diablos Rojos but also because they lose no one to the Mexico national team. They have a veteran squad with lots of Liga MX experience.
Unlike Toluca, this looked a lot like the Pachuca team we’ve seen all year, and it will be the team until Tuzos are knocked out of the Liguilla - or the moment when Pocho Guzman is lifting the trophy.
Here’s what’s ahead:
Chivas-Tigres - 9:07 p.m. ET Saturday- Telemundo + Peacock
Cruz Azul-Atlas - 11:15 p.m. ET Saturday - Univision + CBS Sports Network
Pachuca-Toluca - 7p ET Sunday - TUDN
Pumas - América - 9:15p ET Sunday - Univision + CBS Sports Golazo
Didn’t you used to be the Conca-catch-up?
Playoffs in Central America, new national team managers & all sorts of other updates … my plan is to bring the Conca-catch-up back for a triumphant return tomorrow.