Mexico confirms Estadio Azteca as Nations League dates are announced.

Concacaf released the time and venues for the October matches of the Concacaf Nations League on Tuesday. The most surprising news for Mexico is they will play their October 15th home match against Panama in the Estadio Azteca. Their October 11th match against Bermuda will take play in the Bermuda National Sports Center in Bermuda. The other important news is that the Nations League finals tournament will be moved, and will take place in June of 2020 instead of March as first announced. This means that there will be a Concacaf tournament for Mexico in the Summer of 2020 if they qualify to it by winning the group.

Playing the match in Azteca seems to be a strange decision for Mexico. For the majority of pundits, Mexico is planning to take an all-Liga MX team to these games, and there even rumors of it being a mostly U23 team with the Olympic qualifiers in March taking precedent. Thus having Estadio Azteca, a huge stadium that has trouble selling out games when they are not meaningful, seems extra risky. It looks to be a wonderful opportunity to have Mexico play in another venue around Mexico where fans would probably go to take advantage of the few opportunities they have of seeing the NT, unlike Azteca where Mexico play all their World Cup qualifiers.

Maybe Coach Gerardo Martino wanted to make his coaching debut on Mexican soil in the most important stadium in Mexico, especially since it’s an opportunity to see where he will be playing the WC qualifiers. Still this might mean that European players might get called up if the ticket response is slow, which I think it definitely will be. To the fans outside Mexico City there should be hope because it’s almost a guarantee that Mexico will not play their home game against Bermuda on November 19th in Azteca, since the stadium will be hosting the annual NFL game a day before on November 18th.