Team Dossier: Mexico — the hosts who must finally break the curse

Seven World Cups in a row, seven exits at the round of 16. Mexico has made qualifying look easy and advancing look impossible. In seven tournaments — 1994 through 2022 — El Tri have always reached the last 16 and never once gone past it. In Spanish it has a name: el quinto partido. The fifth game. The one that never comes.1

This year Mexico co-hosts the tournament. Games at the Azteca. Crowds entirely on their side. If there is a moment to end forty years of heartbreak, this is it.

Javier Aguirre — back for a third stint as national team manager — will take them there. The question is what happens when they arrive.

The big talking point before a ball is kicked: Hirving "Chucky" Lozano is not here. San Diego FC's star winger fell out of favour with his club after a reported locker-room altercation with head coach Mikey Varas, his playing time dried up, and Aguirre had been clear that consistent minutes were a requirement for selection.2 Lozano's last appearance was as a substitute in San Diego's 3-1 playoff loss to Vancouver. For a player who scored the winner against Germany in Russia 2018, it is a strange, quiet end to a World Cup story.

The team that does go is built around two players who represent Mexico's present and future in different ways.

Edson Álvarez (Fenerbahçe) wears the captain's armband and anchors the midfield. He is the closest thing Mexico has to a proper defensive holding midfielder who can also carry the ball — the type they have searched for since Rafa Márquez retired. Alongside him, Álvaro Fidalgo (Real Betis) offers the creative thrust, a naturalized Spanish midfielder who has grown into one of the key attacking organizers in this system.

Up front, the man everyone will be watching: Santiago Giménez (AC Milan). He finished this past Serie A season with 16 league goals.3 That matters because Mexico have been searching for a reliable center-forward for years. Raúl Jiménez (Fulham), now 32, provides the experienced support option and is reportedly close to full fitness.

In goal, Guillermo Ochoa — 40 years old, preparing for a sixth World Cup. A record for any Mexican player and one of those facts that sounds implausible until you check it.4

At the back, Johan Vásquez (Genoa) and Israel Reyes (América) are expected to form the central defensive partnership, with Jesús Gallardo (Toluca) covering at left back after the club-versus-country standoff earlier in camp — Gallardo initially stayed with Toluca for a CONCACAF Champions Cup semifinal, only reporting after Aguirre publicly delivered an ultimatum.2

Aguirre is not a tactical visionary. What he is — and what this squad needs right now — is a manager who knows how to keep an emotionally volatile dressing room pointed in one direction.6

His default shape is 4-2-3-1, with Álvarez and a partner holding, Fidalgo as the advanced playmaker behind a second forward, and Giménez leading the line. In possession Mexico tend to build through Álvarez, shift wide, and look for Fidalgo's movement to unlock. Without the ball the double pivot compresses, and the shape relies on Giménez pressing from the front to force errors.

The vulnerability is at the back. Vásquez and Reyes are solid Liga MX-level center-backs, but neither has been consistently tested at the highest level under pressure. Against South Korea, who press well, the transition moments will be watched closely.

South Africa, who beat Bafana Bafana in the 2010 opening match at Soccer City before drawing 1-1, are the group's weakest side on paper.5 South Korea have Heung-Min Son (now at LAFC) and enough Premier League-based players to cause problems. Czechia have Patrik Schick and Tomas Soucek — not a pushover, but not the kind of opponent that typically derails Mexico in the group stage.

Mexico has never lost a World Cup match at the Azteca. That record faces its biggest test in the opener.

Can they actually break the streak?

El Tri have been a Round of 16 team for so long that it almost feels structural — like the tournament is designed to eject them at that stage. But the conditions in 2026 are different. Home fans. A striker in form. A manager who has done this job before and knows where the bodies are buried.

The realistic ceiling, given the draw, is a quarterfinal. Getting there requires handling a second-round opponent — likely a team from Group B (Argentina, Australia, or another qualifier) or Group C. That is exactly the kind of match where Mexico have historically found a way to lose.

If Giménez fires and Fidalgo controls the tempo, Mexico reaching the last eight is genuinely possible. If the defense leaks early goals, if Ochoa shows his age, if the pressure of the Azteca crowd becomes weight rather than fuel — the eighth round-of-16 exit writes itself.

Quote of the Day: "Whoever doesn't come to camp will be out of the World Cup. That is something we cannot be flexible about, not in the least." — Javier Aguirre, after standoff with Liga MX clubs over reporting dates2