Mexico disappoints again in defeat to Venezuela

Mexico continued their terrible play as they lost to Venezuela 1-0 in the final game of their group stage game. Mexico was dominated for most of the game and once again continued to play poorly, failing to create much offensive danger as they lost to a Venezuelan team that was clearly the best team in the group. Although there was the possibility that Venezuela would rest a lot of players, as they were already qualified, they made few changes and went with their best players. Mexico finished second in the group because of Germany's terrible game against Vanuatu that had them lose a 3-0 lead, to only win 3-2.

Mexico started playing some of their best football of the competition as they were the better team for the first 20 minutes. Ronaldo Cisneros had a great play that produced a good chance. Yet as the game went on, Venezuela started improving and soon started dominating and showing they were the better team. Mexico once again started losing balls and Diego Aguilar and Pablo Lopez weren't creating any offensive work. To make matters worse, Venezuela's coach knew about Uriel Antuna and worked the team to erase him. Then a great play by Sebastian Cordova opened the scoring for Venezuela. Mexico was in disarray and even their first half substitutions didn’t help improve things.

The second half continued with Venezuela's dominance and Mexico's two substitutions in 10 minutes looked more from desperation than good tactical output. Yet Antuna started generating good plays and Mexico finally started looking dangerous. It looked like Venezuela was starting to lower their intensity and Mexico was gaining the advantage but still they weren't creating as much danger as expected. Cordoba limped out injured for Venezuela and it looked like that would effectively end Venezuela's attacking intentions. Even so, Mexico continue to produce very little, with Eduardo Aguirre having a terrible game. In the end they didn't come close in the final minutes.

Mexico's group stage performance was a total letdown, despite being able to qualify into the next round. The qualification was due more because of Germany’s equally terrible level of play. Their awful performance against Vanuautu today (in which they missed a penalty kick and lost a 3-0 lead to only finish with a 3-2 score) meant that their goal differential was -1 to Mexico's 0. Mexico showed they are nowhere near contenders and that they should be lucky to even play in the next round. Venezuela was overly superior and it could have been a lot worse had they not lowered their intensity. Mexico will now need to see who they play next after all the group stages are done and they will need to improve in every position of the field.