Photo: Eric Verhoeven/Soccrates/Getty Images
SANTA CLARA, Calif. — 643 days after their historic, 7-0 collapse against then Juan Antonio Pizzi’s Chile, the Mexican National Team has returned to Levi’s Stadium for a friendly against Iceland. Yet, on the surface not much has changed. A total 15 of the 23 players that composed the 2016 Copa America squad remain under the command of Juan Carlos Osorio, who has been at the helm for more than two years.
That’s not to say that things internally haven’t changed for the better, though.
Asked how he has since processed the defeat, and how it’s reshaped him mentally three months prior to the World Cup, Osorio was adamant that his and Mexico’s worst defeat was a blessing in disguise.
“Well, I think that the most important thing in any critical situation, in any crisis is to recreate the incident or the accident itself,” Osorio told a jam-packed press conference room at Levi’s. “Then, in order to learn from it, you have to understand it. That was the first thing I did. Recreate, understand, then after that I had to [have] plan B or a contingency plan.”
“So if you ask me and from anybody else that wants my honest answer, I’m glad that that happened because I learned a lot from it,” he added. “I don’t know if the next time around we will be able to reverse the score, but we will be certainly prepared to stop the damage. I think that is a big loss in my career because I learned something in a way that I wasn’t expecting to learn. But it happened and that’s a part of life.”
When cleats meet grass again, such “plan B” or “contingency plan” is likely to not be called upon. In fact, striker Raul Jimenez claimed a 7-0 scoreline “can’t happen again.”
The mid-March friendly, during FIFA’s last international break months prior to the World Cup, is not a Copa America quarterfinal. The stakes are much smaller. For Iceland, Mexico gives them a sense of how Argentina will play in their World Cup debut. While for Osorio and Co., it will be one of the last opportunities to observe the players that will likely be excluded from their final list.
History says that for Osorio and Mexico there is no better trial and error environment than Levi’s Stadium.
“And I do still believe that the best benefit from that catastrophe (if I can call it) that accident was the best learning experience,” Osorio said. “I did learn a lot from it.”
One can assume help conquer past ghosts, too.
