Mexico’s Copa America failure is one that could echo for the next World Cup’s co-hosts

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Jaime Lozano pulled up a seat at NRG Stadium in Houston for his press conference ahead of Mexico’s opening Copa America 2024 group game and the first question from the floor set the tone for the nine days that followed.

“Jaime, after coaching the team for a year, aren’t you tired of hearing all the questioning regarding your stay with the national team?”

Lozano shook his head and smiled, and then did what the Mexico coach does: answered politely, chose his words carefully and steered the conversation somewhere else.

But that line of inquiry never went away during a brief Copa America journey that deepened the doubts about the future of their 45-year-old coach, as well as the direction of travel for Mexico ahead of co-hosting the 2026 World Cup finals with neighbours the United States and Canada.

The Copa America draw had been kind to Lozano and his players. There was no footballing powerhouse with them in Group B, nor any nation ranked higher than 30th in the world — and yet Mexico were still unable to secure the top-two finish needed to reach the quarter-finals.

Copa America has unquestionably been a failure in that respect — a word that Lozano didn’t like being used after the defeat against Venezuela in the second of their three matches — but it was also not a surprise. As brutal as it sounds, this is confirmation of what international football looks like for Mexico in 2024.

Their place in football’s pecking order has slipped. They have long ceased to be the preeminent force in their CONCACAF region (it’s nearly five years since they defeated the USMNT) and, on the evidence of what we’ve witnessed at Copa America, it’s now a challenge for them to compete with even second-tier CONMEBOL nations.

Mexico lost 1-0 to Venezuela on a chastening night in Los Angeles, then drew 0-0 with Ecuador in Glendale, Arizona, where 98 minutes wasn’t long enough to come up with the single goal they needed to progress. In truth, Mexico could have played all night and still not have found a way over the line.

Things also turned ugly off the pitch during Sunday’s draw, as supporters were told to stop a homophobic chant or the match would be suspended, with three separate announcements made over the stadium’s public-address system as part of world football governing body FIFA’s three-step protocol designed to combat discrimination from the stands.

The key question now is whether the Mexico Football Federation (FMF) stays true to its pre-tournament message that Lozano is in position for the long haul as they prioritise building for the future, or if the meek manner of the team’s exit at Copa America — Mexico scored only one goal across their three matches — allied to all the background noise from the media and the public, sways their thinking.

“It is difficult to work in the short, medium and long term if, every time you lose a match, you ask for a coaching change,” Duilio Davino, Mexico’s sporting director, said earlier in June. “The project does not end in the Copa America or Gold Cup (next summer’s CONCACAF championship). We will make an analysis at the end of the 2026 World Cup.”

Irrespective of whether the FMF sticks or twists, there is no quick fix to Mexican football’s underlying problems.

Chief among them is the dwindling talent pool. Only seven of Mexico’s Copa America squad play their club football in Europe and just three in that continent’s top five leagues (England’s Premier League, La Liga in Spain, Italy’s Serie A, the German Bundesliga and Ligue 1 in France) — those numbers aren’t going to change overnight, even if that was Davino’s hope on the back of performances in this tournament.

Orbelin Pineda shows his frustration as Mexico are held by Ecuador (Omar Vega/Getty Images)

Davino had alluded to Copa America being a shop window for Mexico’s younger players; if that was the case, it is now boarded up and carries a sign saying: ‘Nothing to see here’.

Even Santiago Gimenez, who has scored prolifically for Feyenoord of the Netherlands for the past two seasons and attracted the attention of Europe’s top clubs, toiled in a Mexico shirt.

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Losing Edson Alvarez, the captain and lynchpin of the team, to a serious hamstring injury inside the first 30 minutes of the opening game was a huge blow, and Lozano is also entitled to wonder how differently things might have panned out had Orbelin Pineda scored from the penalty spot against Venezuela — but neither of those moments will change the narrative around Mexico’s performances or influence the post-mortem back home.

A penny for the thoughts of the old guard, who had been discarded as part of a rebuilding programme that Lozano describes as ‘renovation’. Raul Jimenez, Hirving ‘Chucky’ Lozano and Henry Martin — 60 international goals and 217 caps between them — were all left out as part of ‘the process’.

Lozano was asked after the Ecuador game where exactly that process was going, which felt like a fair question in the circumstances.

“We have improved a lot defensively, but now we have to find that balance, and work on that patience, that final touch in the attacking third,” he replied. “We’ve gained a lot from these players in this tournament and it’s an experience that will help us.”

Few would dispute that an out-with-the-old-and-in-with-the-new approach wasn’t needed after the 2022 World Cup, where an ageing Mexico team were eliminated in the group stage for the first time since 1978, but are we really witnessing ‘generational change’?

Mexico’s Cesar Huerta tussles for the ball with Ecuador’s Piero Hincapie (Chris Coduto/AFP via Getty Images)

The average age of Mexico’s Copa America squad was 25.7 years, down from 28.5 years in Qatar 18 months ago, which sounds like a significant difference, but the average age of the team that started the opening group game against Jamaica in Houston was 27.2 years.

Only five of the players in Lozano’s squad were aged 23 and under — and three of the five had never featured at Copa America. To put it another way, the roster has become a lot younger but the age of the team on the pitch hasn’t altered much at all. As for the quality, the results tell a story.

Last summer, the FMF outlined a series of initiatives to bring about long overdue change to help the national setup: steps that involved the federation working more closely with clubs of Liga MX (the top division of domestic football), tapping into the wisdom of experienced overseas voices, playing more high-calibre opponents in friendlies, and forming relationships with European teams to open up opportunities across the Atlantic for young Mexican players.

All nice ideas for the future but, with a (partially) home World Cup on the horizon, it’s the here and now that is a worry — a worry that lots of people in Mexico saw coming long before a ball was kicked at this Copa America.

(Top photo: Mexico striker Santiago Gimenez; Alvaro Avila/Jam Media/Getty Images)