Mexico land in Girona for final prep matches prior to World Cup

The Qatar 2022 World Cup continues to approach us ever so quickly. We now sit just under three weeks away and can already start to smell it, as the participating National Teams slowly begin to make their way toward the host country for the start of the cup. Such is the Mexico NT’s case, who just made its arrival to the city of Girona, Spain just hours ago as it closes out its friendlies leading up to the main event.

With only two matches left to go before the real thing, Mexico will square up to two National Teams who didn’t even qualify for the World Cup, but who nonetheless possess similar traits to their group rivals.

We’re talking about Iraq (Tuesday, Nov. 8th, 10 pm ET / 7 pm PT) and Sweden (Wednesday, Nov. 16th, 2:30 pm ET / 11:30 am PT). Their first rivals come out of the same confederation (Asia) as Saudi Arabia, who Mexico will meet for their third and final group stage match in the World Cup. Meanwhile Sweden, who come out of the Europe (UEFA) confederation, have similar tendencies than those of Poland (also from Europe), Mexico’s opening cup rival. The Sweden friendly will actually be played just six days before El Tri’s WC debut.

Both matches will be played in the Estadi Montilivi, home of recently promoted La Liga club Girona FC, who gained promotion last season through the playoffs. The stadium has the capacity to hold just under 12,000 spectators (11,810), so it is rather small in comparison to those Mexico will be stepping foot in come World Cup time.

Photo by Alex Caparros/Getty Images

But with the National Team’s arrival in Spain, they’ve now just about cut the trip to Qatar in half and will have a little over a couple weeks to adjust to the Europe time differential before heading over to Doha for the November 22 opener against Poland.