Mexico announces final friendly of 2023 against Colombia

Mexico has announced the final friendly to be played in 2023. Mexico will close out the year by facing Colombia in a non-FIFA date friendly to be played on December 16th at Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles. This would be the sixth friendly played in the United States in 2023, and closes out the requirements for SUM. Mexico last played against Colombia in 2022, where they lost by a 3-2 score in a match played at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California.

Mexico will close out the year by facing Colombia in the fifth friendly match under Jaime Lozano. In a strange situation, the match would be the first to be played in 2023 against a CONMEBOL team. While in past years Mexico constantly played against CONMEBOL sides, including having Gerardo Martino play his first four matches as National Team coach against CONMEBOL opposition. Mexico started the year playing against a South American team in Suriname, however they are part of CONCACAF and not CONMEBOL. The situation is probably due to a combination of official matches in which Mexico had their FIFA dates busy because of CONCACAF Competition (Nation’s League and Gold Cup) while CONMEBOL started their World Cup Qualification cycle later. In fact, the match will not be on a FIFA date, which means that both teams should have squads made up mostly of domestic based players.

Mexico will face Ghana on October 14th and Germany on October 17th in Charlotte and Philadelphia respectively. Mexico had two ties over the week against Australia (2-2) and Uzbekistan (3-3) in the first friendly matches under Jaime Lozano. Under previous coach Diego Cocca, they played two friendlies earlier in 2023 against Guatemala (2-0 victory) and Cameroon (2-2).