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Charting Mexico’s Weird Path to the 2014 World Cup in Brazil
Published: June 11, 2014
But there it was—a nice, kooky bow pulling together a bizarrely shambolic qualifying campaign: U.S. midfielder Graham Zusi accepting a faux religious drawing of himself from a Mexican radio crew.
"San Zusi," it said. Yes, it featured a halo and the pope-ish hand gesture with the index finger and thumb just so. It looks like the kind of art you find at Sunday flea markets in Hubbardston, Massachusetts, right next to the black velvet painting of a weeping Elvis and the collection of butterfly knives.
The kitsch didn’t need an exclamation point, but it got one anyway. The Mexican radio guys decked Zusi out in a sombrero. This had the effect of emphasizing his gringo-ness, which I suppose was the point. Apparently, someone left the fake mustache at the hotel.
At the risk of saying something obvious, the scene was superfluous; this was already the strangest campaign for a Mexican national side in recent memory and it didn’t even involve hookers.
The Mexican Football Federation went through four managers. The team failed to beat teams it should have and, even worse, it dropped points at the Azteca—something that rarely happens. It was a fever dream of delusion and incompetence. The success of its youthful, gold-medal-winning Olympic side in London was reduced to a haunting memory.
There was no time for talk of a bright future for Mexican football; this sustained crisis was very much grounded in the present. The Mexican football press brooded, disparaged and condemned. Rafa Marquez was successfully exhumed.
The strange was ubiquitous; canonizing a midfielder from central Florida made sense.
Recently, El Tri have been playing with verve not seen in qualifying. During their recent friendlies, they swaggered to a 3-0 win over Israel and a 3-1 win over Ecuador; while they did lose to Bos...
Article Source: Bleacher Report - International Football
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