A setback for Mexico, who lost their last friendly to Sweden

The long-standing problems that the “Tata” team has were revealed again in this friendly, and have to do with their lack of forcefulness to specify all the situations available to them based on the dapper and neat game that they propose, a characteristic that the Argentine coach imprints on all his coaches.

With Mexico’s top figure, Javier “Chicharito” Hernández out of the 26 players by Martino’s decision as a result of a disciplinary problem, the return recorded in this duel by Raúl Jiménez after a 77-day absence from the playing fields for injury, he hopes that this problem can be resolved already in full competition.

Mexico had a good first half, in which they dominated the Swedes and did not have any problems, but in the second their rival fought for possession of the ball and before 10 minutes they took the lead through Marcus Rohdén.

But less than five minutes later, the experienced Andrés Guardado, who with this match reached the record of 178 official matches with the jersey of his team and is the one with the most appearances in history, started the action that extended to Alexis Vega, who he delivered a filtered pass to Héctor Herrera so that he could achieve parity with a low and cornered shot.

But just over five minutes before the epilogue, Mattias Svanberg appeared in the Mexican area to take advantage of a rebound after a corner kick and seal the Swedish victory.

With that bittersweet taste between performance and result, Martino’s team will travel to Qatar on Thursday, where they will make their debut on Tuesday the 22nd against Poland, in a potential crossover between the two top candidates to accompany Argentina from Group C towards the round of 16. final.