The fall of the Aztec: How Mexico collapsed under Martino

For decades the head coach position for the Mexican national football team has been a hot seat, with a considerable size of the fan base never liking the manager of choice. Every cycle when a new manager for the team is announced, the choice is often met with heavy skepticism.

But in early 2019 when Gerardo Martino was announced as the new manager for the Mexican national team - unlike many of his predecessors - he was widely well-received with fans of El Tri.

He had everything you would want in a coach, someone with success at the club level in Argentina, someone who led the Argentine national team to strong performances, someone who took Paraguay to it’s best World Cup performance in its history reaching the quarter-finals of the 2010 World Cup and nearly upset the eventual World Champion Spain.

Martino also briefly led one of the most star-studded locker rooms for FC Barcelona, and his success followed him to MLS where he took a new franchise and led them to an MLS cup in 2018 - in just the franchise’s second-ever season - which took place just weeks before he left that job to take charge of El Tri. That last experience gave him familiarity with Concacaf which some of his predecessors lacked.

In his first 24 games in charge, Martino led Mexico to 20 wins, 2 draws and only 2 losses - an efficacy rate of 86 percent - which is off the charts for a national coach pretty much anywhere.

During those first 24 games - Martino’s philosophy was really clear and played perfectly to the strengths of the players he has at his disposal - a 4-3-3 line-up.

Despite the challenges the Covid-19 pandemic brought with it, the strongest performances the team put together took place in the fall of 2020 in friendly games in Europe where it beat the Netherland and drew Algeria in games played in Dutch territory. A month later Mexico beat South Korea and Japan in games played in Austria.

But since then Mexico has been on a pronounced decline with no sight of things getting any better, anytime soon.

In the next 32 games - Mexico has won 16, lost 6 and tied 10 - an efficacy level of 60%.

So where did it all go wrong?

While many factors have led to the fall from grace of the team - you can put a date of when everything began to fall apart - that date May 29, 2021.

For some unknown reason, on that fateful May evening - Martino decided to try something new - a completely different strategy for an exhibition game against Iceland - just a few short days prior to the Concacaf Nations League semifinals.

Up to this point Mexico had been a team that controlled the ball possession, used speedy wingers and fullbacks to get in behind the defensive line to create dangerous chances - then in form Raul Jimenez was having little issue finding the back of the net and if the opposition put too much attention to him, one of the central midfielder could simply come forward and find open space at the top of the opposition’s 18-yard box.

But in this new philosophy - Martino completely changed the script. He decided to pull Edson Alvarez, the defensive midfielder, and play him as a center back.

The idea behind this concept was that by having 3 center backs, it could alleviate the defensive fragility the team has had for many years. Subsequently it would give the full backs like Jesus Gallardo and Luis Rodriguez more freedom to press into the attack and therefore becoming a more solid team on both sides - on paper. But on the field it was a completely different story.

The change to a 5-2-3 meant that both midfielders Hector Herrera and Andres Guardado or Carlos Rodriguez were now responsible for covering a huge portion of the field - and teams like Iceland used that to their advantage by overloading the midfield.

Despite having another center back, the defensive struggles only worsened, as the two full back would often be caught in transition leaving the flanks open for the opposing team meaning it was easy for other teams to exploit those gaps and force the center back to get out of position to cover that space and in turn create confusion as to who would then cover the space now left in the middle.

While Mexico came up on top winning 2-1 - that was due to the individual efforts of Hirving Lozano and not a collective effort from the team.

With such a bad precedent set, you would guess that someone with the experience Martino has would’ve learned from this - but he didn’t.

In the Nations League, he put in place the same plan against Costa Rica - and again the big gaps in the middle of the field meant that once the other team recovered possession it meant they had miles of open space to get to the attacking third almost unopposed.

The curious part of all this was that 6 years earlier - then coach Miguel Herrera who was desperate to get the team back in form tried a similar tactic with a very disastrous result - with Costa Rica taking a 2-0 lead in the first half and completely dominating Mexico in the first 30 minutes of the game. Mexico found a way to draw 2-2 in the end.

This time the result was a 0-0 draw that led to a penalty shootout in which Mexico came on top.

While Martino learned his lesson and completely scrapped the idea for its game against the U.S. in the final - the seeds of the downfall had been planted.

How the experiment affected Mexico’s progress

While it may seem that trying something new for a couple of games couldn’t possibly be the root of the problem - the truth is that the experiment came at the worst possible time - the team had an identity under Martino - and it came just before the Nations League and Gold Cup.

Changing your philosophy so close to an official competition means three things - There will not be enough time for the team to adjust to the new style of play, the players will feel that you’re not confident in your own philosophy and when you go back to the previous style, players will be frustrated that all the time spent in practice has gone to waste and find themselves having to readapt to a system they already had mostly dominated.

The style is back, so why are the results not?

While a sudden change of philosophy had a detrimental effect on the team - the summer of 2021 started a chain of events that put Mexico in a very difficult situation.

Mexico lost in the Nations League Final against the U.S., and then went to lose again against an alternative U.S. team in the Gold Cup final a month later.

Hirving Lozano who has been hands down the most important player for Mexico since the 2018 World Cup - was injured during the game against Trinidad and Tobago in the Gold Cup opener. When it lost its most dynamic player in the attack it showed, the team became more predictable to defend and struggled to maintain its offensive proficiency.

Even when Lozano came back - the damage had been done, the opposing team began to put more defenders to contain him and no other players emerged as a secondary threat.

Mirage of World Cup Qualifying

While in World Cup qualifying Mexico ended with the same number of points as leader Canada - that is not a true reflection of the team’s performance.

In the first game against Jamaica, Mexico needed a 90th minute goal from Henry Martin to win its first home game - in the next game Mexico won in Costa Rica, despite the fact that the Ticos dominated the second half, and hit the crossbar in aggregate time.

Against Panama, Mexico was lucky to be down only one goal at half, and took advantage of a much better second half to get a draw.

In November the team got a reality check by losing on the road to the U.S. and Canada with very flat performances and just 10 weeks later - Mexico struggled to beat a 10-men Jamaica team, couldn’t beat Costa Rica at home and beat Panama 1-0 at home thanks to a soft penalty call.

In the final stretch of qualifying - Mexico was lucky not to lose to the U.S. for a fourth time in less than 12 months.

If the team hadn’t gotten those lucky breaks in half of those games, Mexico would’ve likely finished with 7-8 fewer points - meaning they could have easily finished fifth and missed out on a spot in the World Cup.

The other declines

In addition to the loss of momentum caused by Martino’s 5-2-3 experiment - a large number of players’ careers in the national team picture took a nosedive.

For a long time, Martino relied on a back line composed of Jesus Gallardo, Hector Moreno, Carlos Salcedo and Luis Rodriguez - less than a year later all of them with the exception of Gallardo - are essentially out of the picture. Rodriguez became a weak point after getting caught in the wrong position time and time again during the 2021 Gold Cup.

In early 2021 - the only unanswered question was who would play as a right back, it felt as every other position was solidified - with Edson Alvarez playing as the defensive midfielder - Hector Herrera as the 8 and a fierce competition between Andres Guardado, Carlos Rodriguez and Jonathan Dos Santos would give Mexico a lot of depth in the midfield and up front it was easy - Lozano, Corona and Jimenez as the striker.

But now - five months away from the start of the World Cup - the number of starting spots secured has gone down from 10 to 3 - Guillermo Ochoa on goal, Edson Alvarez and Hirving Lozano.

In the midfield, Guardado’s minutes at Real Betis had been in decline and is hard to consider him as a viable starting option, Jonathan Dos Santos who followed his brother to Club America has struggled with injury and bad form and Hector Herrera who is not a starter with Atletico Madrid and used to be the most important player in the midfield had suddenly become a liability.

Lozano has had a few injury concerns and remains the best player Mexico has - but there is no goal scorer to help him.

Raul Jimenez who emerged as the clear No. 1 striker after the 2019-20 Premier League Season in which he scored 17 goals for Wolverhampton - has never recovered his form after fracturing his skull after a head to head collision with David Luiz at the end of 2020.

Since then Jimenez has only managed to score fewer than 10 goals for his club, and in World Cup Qualifying despite playing most of the 14 games only managed to score three goals - all of them from the penalty spot.

You have to go back to November 2020 for the last time Jimenez scored a non-penalty goal for El Tri.

On top of that Martino has blacklisted Javier Hernandez from the national team picture, while other strikers such as Henry Martin and Rogelio Funes Mori are going through a slump.

Wingers looked like a position with a surplus of options more than a year ago - and now they’re in short supply. An excess of wingers would at least give you an option of playing Lozano as a false 9 if no strikers are in form.

But over the last few months, Uriel Antuna has dropped in form, Diego Lainez and Orbelin Pineda have seen limited number of minutes at Real Betis and Celta de Vigo respectively.

While Jesus Corona had a good semester at Sevilla that form has not translated into the field when he has played for the national team.

Is there any hope?

As of now Mexico is clearly the third best team in its Group behind Argentina and Poland.

There are some positive takeaways that could really help the team prepare in the months to come - late in the qualifying process players like Gerardo Arteaga, Johan Vasquez have shown they may be ready to take on a bigger role.

Hector Herrera who looked out of form recently should now be a starter for the Houston Dynamo in MLS and that could help him recover some of its form. Carlos Rodriguez has played well for Cruz Azul and if the trend continues he could very well round-up the starting midfield.

The biggest things the team needs to work on ahead of the World Cup is defending better in transition and finding a better strategy on the attacking third. For far too long, Mexico has become very slow and predictable in the final third leading to minimal chances for its strikers.