National Team Manager Resigns

National football team manager Javier Aguirre resigned swiftly after Mexico’s disappointing performance in the 2010 World Cup.

The decision is hardly surprising given the expectations that had been built up going into the tournament, what with Mexico’s record number of players currently in European club sides.

With a draw, a win (against what turned out to be a disastrous French team), and two losses, there wasn’t much room for construing the effort as a decorous one.

Aguirre was called back last year to rescue Mexico’s struggling bid to qualify against generally weak competition in the Concacaf region. He achieved that, but the real target was to reach the quarter finals of the World Cup, not to scrape through the group stage on goal difference and lose – yet again – in the round of 16.

Recriminations abound as they usually do when a country’s team does badly.

The worst thing about Aguirre’s strategy was that a number of promising young players – such as goalkeeper Guillermo Ochoa, midfielder Andres Guardado, and striker Javier Hernandez – weren’t given a proper chance to display their skills in soccer’s showcase event. Ochoa didn’t play at all. Instead Aguirre stuck to a number of older players whose careers are near an end and who – in the event – played poorly anyway.

And after this wasted opportunity, there are no signs emanating from the Mexican football hierarchy that anything is about to change radically. Mexican fans should probably be prepared for four more years of international mediocrity.