SOCCER : Uruguay Seeks Offense Against Mexico
Experimenting with new players and a new style, Uruguay Coach Pedro Cubilla said a victorytonight at the Coliseum against Mexico would help him convince soccer fans at home that the1-0 loss Sunday at Denver against the United States was an aberration.
“The fans in Uruguay are not patient,” Cubilla said Monday. “They want victories, not excuses.”
A victory will not come easily against Mexico, which brought its first team in a final tuneup for the Nations Cup, involving eight teams from the North and Central American and Caribbean region, next month in Los Angeles.
The game will begin at 8:30 p.m.
Cubilla, coaching the team until his brother, Luis, takes over this summer, has only three players from Uruguay’s 1990 World Cup team on this trip. Most of the players are young, but he expects them to form the nucleus of the 1994 team.
Uruguay has a well-earned reputation as one of the sport’s most aggressive--read dirty--teams. When the team tried to become kinder and gentler last year, the press in that country began derisively referring to the players as the senoritas.
Despite the resistance, Cubilla insisted that Uruguay will improve its image before 1994.
“That does not mean we won’t be physical,” he said. “We are not a group of ballerinas.”
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