With tomorrow being the last game of the year for Mexico, I figured now would be a good time to look at Hugo Sanchez's first year on the job.
His two glaring faults were losing in the Gold Cup final and crashing out of Copa America. Also, there were some friendly losses that weren't great - the U.S. loss in February, losing his first match in Azteca - but overall Sanchez has done well. He's gotten El Tri off to a good start during this World Cup cycle.
2 comments:
Nice wrap up LB.
I'd give him a solid B for his year. I particularly liked how he handled the switch over from the veterans to the younger players.
The early friendly matches had me worried. As the Gold cup progressed, things got better and the Final could have gone either way as they generally will. Copa America was a big step forward and even the loss against Argentina was tolerable given the roll they were on.
Now, it's up to Hugo to start molding the squad into the team that will qualify without problems. I hope that he takes El Tri to play May/June friendlies in Europe as those teams prep for their Euro 2008 Championship.
Good start to his reign.
I give him a C or C-.
One of his biggest faults was his insistance on playing a 4-4-2 every single game. In other words his tactics and game day management are the pits.
I put the loss to Argentina sqaure on his shoulders. Lousy time to switch Memo's turn in his "rotation" system and his team self destructed like a Mexico team of old. He complicated things with poor substitutions that game.
I think he has a poor record in friendly games. His teams give up late PK's or counterattacks and are lousy on defending set pieces.
Positives: he realizes the youth of Mexico is his best friend. he doesn't seem to play favorites in the sense that you know the best 11 Mexico have will be on the field and even if they're not the best 11, they are going to be fired up to play.
Under the old regime, there were quite a few guys on the team that made you say, huh, whats that guy doing on the team...
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