Heading into the World Cup Qualifying Playoff against New Zealand, the Mexican National soccer team was certainly not playing the way most fans thought they should be given the level of talent held up and down the roster. Despite the fact that players including Javier 'Chicharito' Hernandez, Giovani Dos Santos and Oribe Peralta posed serious problems for other teams on paper, El Tri was unable to earn one of the automatic qualifying spots at the end of the CONCACAF Hexagonal qualifying round since their play was simply not strong enough to get the job done.
Naming Club America head coach Miguel Herrera as the latest man to lead the Mexican National team, supporters of Mexican soccer and those highly involved with the formation of the club and staff hoped the passionate and successful Liga MX manager would be able to rejuvenate a struggling team. Herrera has certainly done that to this point, as his Mexico club dominated New Zealand in the First Leg of the World Cup Playoff at the Estadio Azteca. Utilizing many of the players from his America squad, Herrera has been able to inject a renewed sense of confidence to an El Tri team clearly lacking the ability to believe just a few weeks ago.
Though his team owns a strong four-goal advantage heading into the Second Leg at New Zealand's Friends Arena, Miguel Herrera doesn't want his players to get too far ahead of themselves as they look to capture the team's sixth-consecutive World Cup berth. "We are going in with the idea that this is 0-0 and we aren't going to risk anything," Herrera said. "We are going into Tuesday's match with the same attitude of being as or even more determined than we were in the previous match."
While El Tri plans to approach the game in a cautious manner, the All Whites certainly need to be more aggressive and cohesive on both sides of the ball. Captain Tommy Smith was not happy with the way his side performed in the 5-1 opening leg defeat but he understands that the team needs to put the loss behind them and perform in a higher manner when they take the pitch in front of the home crowd.
"You can't change what happened," Smith said. "We lost the game 5-1 and to be fair, they could have had a few more goals. We came away and took a step back, looked at the game and how it went. We had the players to get a result last week, we just didn't employ our team plan as well as we should have, which makes it an uphill battle on Wednesday. It wasn't the best result to come back with but we know there's a full stadium to play in front of and we're just buzzing to do that. There's still 90 minutes of football to go and football's a strange game. Stranger things have happened than us winning 4-0 on Wednesday night. We want to attack, we want to do the things we do better and attack is one of those so we're going to keep that mentality."
Prediction: Mexico - 2 New Zealand - 1
The All Whites are certainly capable of playing much better in the final leg but because El Tri did a phenomenal job of helping themselves at Estadio Azteca, the task of overcoming the deficit will prove to be too much for New Zealand in the end. Mexico will advance to their sixth-consecutive World Cup tournament.
When and Where to Watch World Cup Qualifying Playoff
DATE: Wednesday, November 20
TIME: 1:00am, ET
TV COVERAGE: ESPN
LIVE STREAM: CLICK HERE or CLICK HERE
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