Long road leads Mexico’s Osorio to historic heights
When Juan Carlos Osorio was knocking on doors around New York looking for a soccer job — any soccer job — a generation ago, he never imagined he would eventually wind up coaching the world’s hottest national team in the sport’s oldest international tournament.
But he never imagined he wouldn’t either.
And it’s that combination of humility and hunger that continue to drive Osorio, whose Mexican team is unbeaten in its last 22 games, the longest current streak in international soccer.
“Thirty years ago, when I started to educate myself and prepare myself for football at a top level, I always set objectives and I always had dreams,” Osorio said Friday. “And so far God has given me the chance to fulfill some of those dreams. I’m thankful for that.
“But the most important thing is what me — and we —– are going to do from now on to try to keep progressing. There are many, many challenges ahead.”
The first is Saturday’s Copa America Centenario quarterfinal against fifth-ranked Chile at a sold-out Levi’s Stadium. The winner will move on to the semifinals, where it will face Colombia, which won its Friday quarterfinal with Peru on penalty kicks. The loser will go home.
And that’s a challenge both Osorio and his players are embracing.
“We’re talking about a soccer nation that has a great chance to play against the No. 5 team in the world, the current Copa America champion,” Osorio said in Spanish. “We’re not thinking about whether that’s good for me or the coaching staff. We’re only thinking about what’s good for Mexican soccer.”
Added forward Hirving Lozano: “It’s going to be an intense game.”
It’s the kind of game Osorio dreamed of someday coaching when, 18 years ago, he offered his services to the now-defunct Staten Island Vipers, a second-tier professional club that played its games at a local high school.
It wasn’t the English Premier League, but it was soccer. And that made it a huge step up for a 37-year-old Colombian immigrant who had worked construction and food-service jobs to get by.
The Premier League would come soon after though, with Osorio basically begging his way onto the staff at Manchester City, working his way up from trainer to assistant coach in four seasons. After that came two stints in Major League Soccer and five years with club teams in Colombia, Mexico and Brazil.
The one thing all those jobs had in common, though, is Osorio won wherever he went. So when Mexico fired the successful but emotional Miguel Herrera after an altercation with a TV reporter last summer, it turned to the quiet and studious Osorio.
It was an unpopular decision in Mexico, where 11 of the last 13 national team coaches have been Mexican. But Osorio and his all-Colombian staff silenced the critics by winning their first nine games, eight of them shutouts. Included in that string was a 1-0 win over Chile earlier this month.
“I’m not surprised,” Osorio said of the successful start. “When a national team or club invites us to work for them, we analyze the list of the players. And … if there’s a national team that plays the way we think the game should be played, it’s Mexico.
“We attack as a group, we defend as a group. It sounds very simple.”
Osorio makes it look simple too, which is why his players have bought into his often unorthodox training methods and frequent lineup changes.
“We have already internalized his style and tactical thinking,” defender Hector Moreno said. “That is the reason we are having good results.”
Now they have a chance at historic results. El Tri has never won a major senior championship outside Mexico and its two best World Cup finishes — quarterfinal appearances in 1970 and 1986 — both came at home as well. So a win Saturday would move this team into the conversation over the best Mexican team of all time. The 22-match unbeaten is already a national record.
And that’s a long way from the Staten Island Vipers.
“It’s a great opportunity for Mexican football,” Osorio said. “We couldn’t ask for a lot more than that.”
kevin.baxter@latimes.com
Twitter: @kbaxter11
