Copa America Centenario: Where is the Mexican National Team?

In a matter of 90 minutes, 90 humiliating and embarrassing minutes, Mexico went from having the world’s best 22-game unbeaten streak and were a day away from going a complete 365 days without a defeat. Or in other words, one complete year.

Yet after 90 minutes, instead of looking forward to a Copa America Centenario semifinals matchup, El Tri had just been thumped by Chile 7-0 and left with their tails between their legs. Over the last week, pundits and former players have made easy work of bashing this national team and have pointed the finger at head coach Juan Carlos Osorio. That is the easy thing to do. After all, Osorio is vastly different to what is often expected in Mexican soccer.

Regardless of pundit and fan opinion, Osorio stayed on as national team manager this week and will continue to lead the team. With a little more than two months until Mexico’s next set of matches, which are World Cup qualifying matches, and after a week to let the disaster of the Chile match set, it’s time to reflect and see where Mexico really is as a team?

They are who they thought they were

In reality, Mexico isn’t much different than the team they were last year. Before the Chile match, they weren’t one of the top teams in the world regardless of what their recent form said. They also aren’t seven goals worse than Chile on a regular basis. They are where they have been for the better part of 15 years or so, somewhere in the middle--capable of beating anyone and losing to anyone on any given day. If anything their group stage games showed their true colors. In a matter of a week, they went from beating a good and gritty Uruguay that sits on top of the CONMEBOL qualifying table, to beating Jamaica in an unimpressive fashion, and pulling out a late draw against a Venezuelan team most would expect Mexico to beat on most nights. Even after the defeat to Chile, you would still pick them to be the best team in CONCACAF.

So what did go wrong?

If Mexico is still a top 20 team in the world but not a top 10, why did they get slaughtered the way they did by Chile? Again, anyone and everyone can find someone to blame for that, but after such a defeat it has to be the players who shoulder most of the blame. Yes, Osorio should take some blame for probably making dramatic changes at halftime to try and make the team more offensive but it’s the players who were completely lost. If El Tri holds on for a few more minutes at the end of the first half and goes into halftime only down 1-0, regardless of how bad they played they can say certainly come back. Instead, they got scored on late in the first half and early in the second half and that’s where the wheels fell off for Mexico. Instead of rallying and showing some fight, the players wilted and looked like they would have rather been anywhere but there.

Anyone who’s ever played a sport at a high level has had a moment of that matter. Maybe not 7-0 bad, but have been in a match where you can just see that there’s no hope and all you want is for the ref to call the game right there because it’s not going to be your night. Time can’t move fast enough and the ground can’t swallow you up fast enough. Anyone who tells you differently is lying or they didn’t play a sport long enough at a high enough level to tell you otherwise.

The defeat didn’t take away the fact Jesus Corona and Hirving Lozano have huge potential as future great players, that Javier Hernandez is an above average goal scorer, and that Hector Herrera is a good box-to-box midfielder. It was a perfect combination of everything going terribly wrong for Mexico and a Chile team who clicked at the perfect time.

Now what?

The pain of the defeat won’t go away anytime soon for Mexico. The next big test for Mexico won't come until November when the CONCACAF Hex starts, which Mexico has already qualified for. At the very least, it will be a year until Mexico has a chance on a global stage to show their worth at the 2017 Confederations Cup, and depending on how much or how little you value the Confederations Cup, the real chance won’t be for another two years until the 2018 World Cup.

By no means does that mean Osorio or Mexico have any wiggle room because of the FMF's habit of having a quick trigger on coaches, a bad Confederations Cup performance or anything short of an almost perfect start to the Hex could be all the higher-ups need to let Osorio go.

The next few months will be a real test for Osorio and those players who took part in that defeat to Chile as they work to put that defeat behind them and see if they can rebound from that match and not let that be their legacy in a Mexican jersey.