Does changing coaches help improve a team?s fortunes? If that were so, the Mexicans ought to be one of the favourites for Brazil 2014. In the lead up to the big event, Mexico had no fewer than four coaches manning the side over a five-game stretch last year. Jose Manuel De la Torre, in charge of the qualification campaign, was sacked after managing just one win in seven games, despite playing lightweights like Jamaica, Costa Rica, Honduras, and Panama.
Two more coaches came and went. Luis Fernando Tena was sacked after losing his first game and V?ctor Manuel Vucetich lost his job after two matches in charge. Mexico, at that point, just had two wins in 10 games and it was up to Miguel Herrera to bail them out. For a team that had won the Olympics gold just a year back, it had all come down to a play off against New Zealand to make the final, and they did it in style, winning 9-3 on aggregate. A loss, and Herrera would have been the latest to come worse off in the Mexican standoff.
