Mexico City: Mexico will seek to put their nightmarish World Cup qualifying campaign behind them on Wednesday when they host New Zealand in the first leg of a last-chance intercontinental play-off.
The Mexicans are usually overwhelming favourites against smaller football nations like the ‘All Whites’ at their imposing, 105,000-capacity Azteca Stadium in Mexico City. But El Tri won just once of their five home games in the final qualifying round of the North, Central America and Caribbean (Concacaf) group, finishing fourth out of six teams.
While the United States, Costa Rica and Honduras won direct tickets to Brazil, Mexico barely secured the play-off — a surprisingly poor showing for a powerhouse that was last absent from a World Cup in 1990.
The dismal results led the football federation to sack three managers in six weeks, finally handing the reins to Miguel Herrera last month for the two-game play-off.
The outspoken manager, who led Club America to a domestic title this year, voiced confidence that his squad can win the return leg in New Zealand on November 20 as well as Wednesday’s home tie.
“The first thing we said was that we shouldn’t think about what happened in the past because that’s something we can’t resolve,” Herrera said.
“We are going to win in Mexico and we will also seek to win over there [in New Zealand].”
Fans have turned on their team, with 60 per cent saying in a poll last month that Mexico did not deserve to qualify. Experts have warned that missing the World Cup would cost sponsors and broadcasters more than $600 million (Dh2.2 billion).
Herrera has shaken things up since taking over, calling up only players from the domestic league while leaving out European-based stars, including Manchester United’s Javier ‘Chicharito’ Hernandez and Villareal’s Giovani dos Santos.
He said Mexico would seek to exploit New Zealand’s loss of captain Winston Reid, who was ruled out of the play-off with an ankle injury he suffered playing for his English Premier League club West Ham.
But New Zealand striker Rory Fallon said the All Whites’ familiarity with the intercontinental play-off system could be to their advantage.
Fallon scored the goal against Bahrain in the second leg of their play-off that sent New Zealand to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. This time, however, the All Whites face a much stronger side that has played in 14 of the 19 World Cups. New Zealand have appeared in only two — Spain in 1982 and South Africa in 2010.
“Nobody in the world would have anticipated having Mexico in a play-off,” said New Zealand manager Ricki Herbert. “We certainly didn’t.”
Herbert said he thought Wednesday’s match was ‘one of the hardest, if not the hardest’ New Zealand had ever faced.
