Mexico Keeps Its Nerve, Gives Italy Case of Jitters : Group E: A 1-1 tie puts Mexico in first place. Italy isn’t assured of advancement until later in the day.
To understand how Mexico frustrated Italy Tuesday in a World Cup game that doubled the size of Mexican dreams, one needed only to listen.
Midway through the second half, Mexican fans, who chant, “Ole!” each time their team controls the ball with a short pass, turned creaky RFK Stadium into a bullring.
From Luis Garcia, to Joaquin del Olmo, to Jorge Rodriguez, to . . .
Ole! Ole! Ole! Ole! Ole! Ole!
The Mexicans eventually lost that possession but never their nerve, battling the Italians to a 1-1 tie, which gave Mexico the Group E title on goals scored.
So, Mexico heads for a second-round battle in East Rutherford, N.J., next Tuesday against the second-place finisher in Group D--probably Nigeria--but the once-proud Italians face a much more difficult road.
By finishing third in Group E behind Mexico and Ireland, because of their loss to the Irish, the Italians must play a first-place team in the second round.
Argentina, anyone?
“We need you to pray,” Italy’s Coach Arrigo Sacchi said to his fans.
Jorge Campos, the Mexican goalkeeper with the fluorescent uniform, had a different message for his fans.
After spending 90 minutes looking like a flying scoop of sherbet, diving and leaping to help stop 15 of 16 Italian shots, Campos smiled and stuck out his tongue.
“We are surprised we won, but now . . . everybody watch,” he said.
Those who watched the Mexicans overcome a one-goal deficit--there was a full house of 53,186--saw a confident team playing a tentative one. A speedy team playing a stumbling one. A strong-willed team playing a dispassionate one.
It was not difficult to tell which team belonged to Mexico. At game’s end, the Mexicans leaped into one another’s arms while their thousands of bouncing fans literally rocked the stadium.
The Italians? They hid their heads in their shirts.
“They are going to be partying in Mexico City tonight,” forward Luis Roberto Alves said, accurately predicting a celebration around the Angel of Independence monument. “They are going to bring that angel down.”
It is the first time Mexico has advanced to the second round of a World Cup tournament on foreign soil. In their previous nine Cup finals, they have been quarterfinalists twice, both times in Mexico.
It was also perhaps the first time in this World Cup that a team played for a tie, watched the strategy backfire, then survived to tell about it.
After a scoreless first half that left no doubt of the Mexicans’ defensive intentions--they didn’t shoot until the 28th minute--Italy made them pay in the third minute of the second half.
Bouncing a pass from Demetrio Albertini off his chest, Daniele Massaro, who had come in as a substitute to start the second half, slipped between defenders Claudio Suarez and Ramirez Perales and fired a 15-yard shot into the net past Campos.
What happened?
“I forget,” Campos said later, smiling.
Actually, the entire team immediately acted as if it forgot. Showing no signs of depression, the Mexicans immediately mounted a counterattack.
Ten minutes later, midfielder Marcelino Bernal tied the game with a 25-yard shot that illustrated not only the Mexicans’ determination, but the Italians’ confusion.
From Alberto Garcia Aspe to Carlos Hermosillo to Bernal, the Mexicans completed two simple lateral passes just before the score. The Italians were inexplicably unable to stop them.
And who was that Italian defender diving in vain at the last pass before Bernal made his kick? Forward Giuseppe Signori, of course.
“I was pulled back, playing the fifth man in our zone,” Signori said. “There was some mistakes made, but if nobody ever made any mistakes, nobody would ever score any goals.”
With their necessary tie intact, the Mexican midfielders and defenders spent the rest of the game shoving around the apparently overrated Italian stars.
When a workmanlike player such as Ignacio Ambriz or del Olmo was beaten, Campos was there with a belly flop.
That is what happened during Italy’s final chance, in the 88th minute, when Nicola Berti headed a ball that Campos barely knocked left, cutting his finger while sealing the victory.
Er, tie.
“It was a tie that was like a victory,” said Alves, the sounds of horns and whistles still apparent several floors above him outside RFK. “A special, special victory.”
* IRELAND: A scoreless tie with Norway sends the Irish into the second round and Norwegians home. C4
