Uncovering Mexico
Jeremy Schwartz is the Mexico correspondent for Cox Newspapers. He is based in Mexico City.What's on this page?
All the entries posted on March 17, 2008.
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Home > Uncovering Mexico > Archives > 2008 > March > 17
Monday, March 17, 2008
Mexican soccer hits new low: No Olympics
Mexico, it seems, still can’t believe the news: After a performance that is being labeled as “shameful” and “sad,” the Mexican national soccer team has plunged Mexico into a deep funk by getting itself eliminated from the Olympic qualifiers in California. The team tied with Canada, beat up on Haiti, and lost to Guatemala, sealing its fate as a first-round failure, the first time the team hasn’t made it out of the opening round of Olympic qualifiers.
This weekend’s shocking turn of events, against what most agree was weak competition, has led to all manner of soul searching in soccer-mad Mexico.
Francisco Javier Gonzalez, an analyst for Reforma newspaper, writes this morning that perhaps Mexican soccer just isn’t as good as Mexico would like to believe: “We all believed that our soccer was inflated with more than just hot air … What happened in the pre-Olympics was pathetic.”
A bitter Carlos Padilla, Mexico’s chief of mission for the Beijing games, harpooned the national team with this nasty barb: “The result reflects the exact dimension of our level of soccer … I feel cheated.”
The team was made up of the so-called “Golden Generation,” a phalanx of up-and-coming hot shots who were supposed to rejuvenate Mexican soccer. Coach Hugo Sanchez said the team would win a medal in Beijing. Instead, “The generation of gold is now the generation of caca,” writes El Universal columnist Eduardo Brizier Carter. “There’s nothing crueler than confronting reality.”