Club America fires Miguel Herrera

Miguel Herrera’s second tenure as coach with Club America has come to an end as he was fired from the job on Monday. Like his tenure with the Mexican National Team, it seems a fight was the straw that broke the camel’s back although getting eliminated by Chivas, your biggest rival, and then losing both games in the CONCACAF Champions League, didn’t help. Herrera won a Liga MX title in 2018 and a Copa MX in 2019 with America. No word yet on his replacement.

Miguel Herrera has been fired for the first time by America. His previous tenure as a coach with the team ended with him joining the Mexican National Team and thus he wasn’t fired. Herrera had given Club America a Liga MX title after beating Cruz Azul, the first in eight years. He was well regarded by Club America fans and then joined the Mexican National Team after qualifying to the World Cup on an interim basis after a playoff win against New Zealand. With the National Team he had the best World Cup since 1998 in which Mexico were minutes away from getting to the fifth game before losing out to the Netherlands. He would then have a rough time in the 2015 Copa America, where Mexico went out on in the Group Stage after it was forced to take an alternate squad. Mexico bounced back by winning the 2015 Gold Cup but the performance there left a lot to be desired including only getting to the final because of referee help against Panama in the semifinals. Then on the return to Mexico, Herrera got into a fight with reporter Cristian Martinolli, who had a campaign of criticism against him, and he was fired because of it.

After a spell in Tijuana, Herrera returned to America where he was a fan favorite. Once again he would give Club America Liga MX title with a win over Cruz Azul in the 2018 Apertura. Yet as time went by his style of play grew less favorable with fans and there were more calls for his firing as America stopped getting results. In this Apertura 2020, he would get a lot of criticism during the season and things went worst when they were eliminated in the Quarterfinals by Chivas, their biggest rivals. Club America was favored because of the better squad and because Chivas had key injuries, and yet they lost both games and were eliminated.

Then came the Concacaf Champions League which was completed on a single venue because of COVID-19. There America lost their first game against Atlanta United by a 1-0 score but went through because they had defeated them 3-0 in the first leg. The semifinals would be a one game affair, and there they lost and were eliminated 3-1 by LAFC. Worse for Herrera was that he was red carded in halftime after getting into a fight with assistant coach Ante Razov, in which Herrera was punched. It seems the bad results, the animosity from fans, but more so the fact that once again he got into a physical fight all doomed his chances and he was let go. No word yet on who the replacement will be but a lot of names are being thrown and with the season starting early on January 8th, there should be a name soon.