Aguirre Fast Becomes Mexico’s Miracle Cure
There was Javier Aguirre, surrounded by Americans again.
They were peppering him with questions, armed with their notepads and tape recorders, waiting impatiently for Aguirre’s thoughts on Mexico’s surprising 1-1 draw with Italy to be translated into English.
Long before Aguirre became coach of Mexico’s World Cup team, he played for the Los Angeles Aztecs of the old North American Soccer League. He knows his way around an English phrasebook. He can speak the language, seasoning it with nuances and a sense of humor, but he goes out of his way to avoid it. To Aguirre, the native tongue is a point of Mexican pride, so he sits back and keeps the Spanish flowing.
He was in a good mood, having watched his team, underappreciated by the international media, come within five minutes of toppling mighty Italy. Spotting a familiar face in the audience, an American writer who has been following the Mexican team across Japan, Aguirre interrupted the interview to hustle over from the microphone and playfully poke the press credential hanging from the reporter’s neck.
“See,” Aguirre said, in English, with a mischievous smile, “it is important now to know how to speak Spanish.”
Translation: Mexico’s soccer team has become a very big story. See you Yanks in the round of 16.
Aguirre’s toothy grin has become the new face of Mexican soccer. On the job for barely a year, Aguirre inherited a team in disarray and a fan base in despair, and has turned everything around.
On the fields of Niigata and Miyagi and Oita, Mexicans are outworking Croatians, outscoring Ecuadoreans, outplaying Italians.
In the stadium aisles, Mexicans are singing and dancing and making travel plans for el gran partido with the United States on Monday in Korea, taking this Asian getaway to places previously unimagined.
Aguirre made his debut as Mexico’s coach on July 1, 2001.
The opponent: the United States.
Aguirre knew it was win or bust. “This game is life and death for my future and for Mexican soccer,” said Aguirre, who is given to such melodramatic pronouncements, before the match.
Making sure his players got the message, Aguirre spent the match prowling the sideline, waving his arms, screaming, cursing at the referee and players from both sides. U.S. Coach Bruce Arena called it “the worst behavior I’ve ever seen from a coach--in college or professional.”
But Aguirre had made his point, and his team had earned three. Mexico won, 1-0, to jump-start a 4-0-1 closing run that clinched a World Cup berth on the last day of qualifying.
Aguirre, a tenacious defensive midfielder on Mexico’s 1986 World Cup quarterfinalist, was a national hero. The team’s improbable comeback bought him two important commodities: time and leverage. Aguirre fashions himself as something of a soccer psychologist, motivating his players by pushing the right mental and emotional buttons.
“I worked a lot on the mental attitude of the Mexican players,” Aguirre said. “Mexico has always had very good players. But sometimes they are weak up here.”
Aguirre pointed to his head.
After arriving in Japan in late May, Aguirre took his psychological studies out in the field. He rattled the Croatians by insulting them, calling them old and living on four-year-old achievements. He flattered the Ecuadoreans, saying he feared them. Against Italy, he played on his players’ egos, riling them by challenging them not to settle for a good-enough tie--to try instead to steal an unprecedented victory from the Italians, who had emotional and psychological issues of their own.
For two games, Aguirre worked the room to perfection. But after victories over Croatia and Ecuador, Aguirre gained a new insight into the mind of the Mexican soccer player.
With his team a surprising 2-0, on top of the group and gathering momentum, Aguirre spent the last two days before the Italy match holding news conferences to refute claims in the Mexican media of player unrest.
Cuauhtemoc Blanco, the team’s offensive catalyst and high-maintenance forward, stormed off the field and refused to join his teammates’ post-victory celebration because Aguirre had replaced him with a defender in the last minute of the Ecuador game.
Francisco Palencia, who, like Blanco, plays in the elite Spanish First Division, was so upset by his lack of playing time that he refused to wear the same warmup attire as the rest of the Mexican team before the Ecuador game.
The newspaper Esto reported that Aguirre and Blanco recently appeared together on Mexican television and spent the entire interview avoiding each other’s glance. When the interviewer asked Aguirre if it were “true that you aren’t speaking to each other?” Aguirre simply replied, alluding to Blanco, “Ask him.”
Blanco: “No [we aren’t] ... no.”
The most important game of Aguirre’s coaching career was hours away. Handling the media the same way he draws up a game plan, Aguirre quickly counterattacked.
“Those are just suspicions and none of them are correct,” he said of the talk of player dissent. He said he didn’t “know if there are unhappy players, because no one has told me anything. Everyone on this team has a relevant role to play. There’s no one who is above any other. I’d like to give minutes to everyone if it were possible.”
Aguirre’s preference of Jared Borgetti, erratic during pre-Cup tuneup matches, over the flashier Palencia did appear a curious move. Blanco and Palencia linked well during those same buildup matches. Yet Aguirre started Borgetti in all three group games, relegating Palencia to minimal reserve duty.
When Borgetti missed an open net early in the Croatia game, Aguirre’s tactic seemed all the shakier. But in the second half, Borgetti’s back-heeled pass sprung Blanco, who was taken down in the box for the game-deciding penalty. Against Ecuador, Borgetti volleyed in the tying goal. And against Italy, Borgetti scored the only goal through 85 minutes--beating the revered Paolo Maldini for the header that nearly sunk the Italians.
“The 11 who are playing are getting results,” Mexico’s captain, Rafael Marquez, noted. The point was hard to argue. “There are no doubts about that,” Marquez added. “The best thing to do is support them.”
Win or lose Monday, Aguirre is in his final weeks as coach of the Mexican national team. He has agreed to coach the Spanish club Osasuna this fall, returning to the team for which he once played.
Just don’t tell him he has taken Mexico as far as it can go.
“The players have yet to give me the performance I want,” he said. “We have come a long way in a short space of time. But I know once we play for the full 90 minutes, we will do even better.”
