AUSTIN, Texas — On one side of the U.S.-Mexico rivalry, Mauricio Pochettino beamed. Adulation poured onto the pitch Saturday after a 2-0 win over Panama. Fans chanted Pochettino’s name, and a banner bearing his face summed up the consensus vibe around the U.S. men’s national team: “BELIEVE.”
On the other side, in Puebla, Mexico, boos rained.
They rained for the fifth time in six games, after a 2-2 draw with Spanish club Valencia, in a friendly that should have offered a pressure-free environment to build. But, of course, there is no such thing in Mexican soccer. And so, as the USMNT travels south to meet its archrival for the 78th time Tuesday (10:30 p.m. ET, TNT) the atmosphere around El Tri is fraught with discontent and unease.
To calm it, in July, Mexico fired Jaime Lozano and hired its fourth coach in less than two years, Javier Aguirre.
Aguirre, in his early days on the job, spoke about his desire “to give fans what they’re looking for,” and to “make sure all the fans leave happy with what they see.” But by the end of his second match, a 0-0 draw with Canada at a two-thirds empty AT&T Stadium in Texas, frustration returned.
And a month later, after Saturday’s draw with a Valencia B-team, fatalism set in.
“Neither [Aguirre] nor anyone else has a ‘magic wand’ to end our soccer crisis,” popular TUDN pundit David Faitelson wrote on X.
Former national team fullback Miguel Layun called for a questioning of “everything” in Mexican soccer, beginning with developmental processes. “You have to do an introspection, a very deep analysis, and start correcting from the bottom up — even if it costs us the 2026 World Cup,” he said.
The recurring outcry, in many ways, has been counterproductive. In the past, it has impeded continuity and collective growth. Now, though, at least some sections of the Mexican soccer establishment are searching for and reckoning with the root cause of their pain.
The cause, of course, is not senior national team coaching. Tata Martino, the first of the four recent managers, was not the reason Mexico crashed out of its 2022 World Cup group. Neither he nor Lozano nor any of the 18 men who’ve coached El Tri in the 21st century could lift this current group of Mexican players into soccer’s elite.
Those players, and the systems that shaped them, appear to be the problem. There has long been an incongruity between expectations and the reality of the Mexican player pool, but it has become especially pronounced in recent years. In 2018, Mexico could field a starting 11 mostly plucked from clubs in Europe’s Big Five leagues or the Champions League. In 2024, only three of the current 27-man roster play at that level; 19 of 27 play in Liga MX.
That isn’t a knock on the Mexican league, which remains the pinnacle of North American club soccer. It also isn’t an attack on any of those 27 individuals; when they pull on the green national team jersey, they almost always fight like hell for the badge, and for each other, and for their country.
But they simply aren’t good enough. They haven’t grown like their predecessors did. Liga MX clubs have been hesitant to sell them, and eager to pay them — which keeps them at home, away from the valuable discomfort of the European circuit, and probably slows their personal progress, just like staying in MLS would for a mid-20s American player.
There are likely many other reasons for the dip in quality — most of them debatable, some diagnosed, others less clear. But the reality is that the current Mexican national team is … relatively ordinary.
So, in came Aguirre, for the third time, to rescue El Tri from a crisis. He was on the field, as a player, when Mexico last won a World Cup knockout match (in 1986). Shortly after retiring, he moved into coaching, and has led 10 different clubs and three different national teams — Japan, Egypt and his homeland, Mexico.
In his first two stints at the Mexican helm, beginning in 2001 and 2009, Aguirre kickstarted World Cup qualifying cycles that were sputtering. As he took charge again in August, though — this time with former player Rafa Márquez as an assistant — he noted that this third assignment is a very different task.
“There’s a project that’s not only about rescuing three World Cup qualifiers,” Aguirre said. He celebrated the Mexican soccer federation’s long-term vision. There are no qualifiers, only friendlies and regional tournaments; and “enough time to put a good team together” between now and the 2026 World Cup.
But of course, that was also the company line ahead of the 2024 Copa América. In omitting veterans and selecting an experimental roster, sporting director Duilio Davino said: “We want to take advantage of this great opportunity to not think about the immediacy of the result, and project our path to 2026.”
Then they reacted to the result, a group-stage exit, and sacked Lozano — because the pressure cooker never relents.
So here they are again, with dissatisfaction inescapable. Aguirre’s first two friendlies, against New Zealand and Canada last month, were contested in mostly empty stadiums. His third, the Valencia draw, amplified displeasure. His fourth, against the U.S. Tuesday night in Guadalajara, will be played amid the malaise.
And for Mexico, there is desperately little upside. With Christian Pulisic and Weston McKennie departing the U.S. camp — and seven USMNT regulars already out injured — a win is the expectation. A loss would sound more alarms. The two programs are on parallel paths toward 2026, and at similar stages of a mid-cycle reboot; but the moods around them could not be more different.
