Mexico interim coach Jaime “Jimmy” Lozano thought he might get more excellence from his team by rotating his players ahead of their clash with Qatar on Sunday’s group stage ahead of the CONCACAF Gold Cup, but he was wrong.
Alas, he received a 1-0 defeat.
With a spot in the knockout rounds of the tournament already guaranteed through two statement-making victories earlier in the group stage — 3-1 vs. Haiti and 4-0 vs. Honduras — Lozano rotated his XI through six changes.
Lozano might have wanted to give a handful of his usual starters a break, and also have an opportunity to give minutes to backups. In all, the 44-year-old wanted to experiment it all after being hired just a few days before the start of the Gold Cup.
“It was to see other players, give rest [to some starters], also being careful with some of the [yellow] cards we had,” Lozano said after the match, on the changes he made.
After two games in a row with the same lineup, he brought on Santiago Gimenez, Ozziel Herrera, Carlos Rodriguez, Gerardo Arteaga, Israel Reyes, andJulian Araujo.
Though Mexico lost the match – from a defensive error fromEl Tri, the players created many attempts to score. In comparison, Mexico had a total of 25 efforts on goal with an xG of 2.27 while Qatar had only 0.05.
“There were very, very clear opportunities, from Santi [Gimenez], from Edson [Alvarez], also not sure if it was Diego [Lainez] or someone else there. I think there are five, six very, very clear opportunities, which I’m sure that in any other game would have gone in, and today in the end, we ended up taking a defeat,” Lozano said.
The initial strategy and even the desperate second-half changes might be good. The players seemed to be at fault for not being able to convert at one chance to a goal and at least equalize.
Mexico’s defense then crumbled and gave way to Qatar’s goal when the two central defenders, Alvarez and Reyes, were out of position giving Hazem Shehata the sole chance to head in the goal, eluding goalkeeper and captain Guillermo Ochoa.
“That goal, surely in a club [situation], wouldn’t have happened,” Lozano said. “These defensive questions and of the defensive area are very workable, it’s something that we focus a lot on as coaching staff.”
Though coach Lozano might have done the changes for the best reasons, for fans, there’s no real room for experimentation when you were just given the job on the week that the Gold Cup started.
