Franco: Mexico Regained Identity During Hexagonal

Guillermo Franco will not be with the Mexican National team as they face Trinidad and Tobago for the last World Cup qualifier because of a muscle troubles. However, it will not matter as Mexico booked a ticket to South Africa after a 4-1 win against El Salvador. In the process, Franco says that the El Tri achieved an identity and captured back the support of the fans. 

According to Franco, fans hadn’t shown the current support but that changed with the arrival of Javier Aguirre. 

“The fans have turned around. Before, the people didn’t identify with the national team because we weren’t getting results. The cycles were stopped but since Javier arrived he made changes and the fans came back because we were fighting and battling to get to the main objective,” said Franco in Record. 

Now, the team has qualified and has the Mexican nation’s support, but it wasn’t that way in the beginning of the qualifying cycle. 

“It was very hard, it was difficult. There was a lot of pressure, it wasn’t easy. We started off with Javier (Aguirre) losing in El Salvador. In that moment we were alone, that’s how we felt. But we were committed to working hard, leave behind what had happened and turn the situation around.” 

El Tri started off under the command of Swedish manager Sven Goran Eriksson. Franco claims that there was an identity shift under the foreign manager, but that it was regained again in recent times. 

“(The National Team) got back their identity overall. The national team knows clearly what its playing for, that people watch it. The team does everything it proposes(itself), it has patience, and when it doesn’t have the ball it fights all over the pitch for it. We fight until the 90th minute and that’s proof that we have identity.” 

“There are still many month to speak of that, we’ll see when the World Cup arrives,” added Franco in reference to whether the Mexican national team would get past the “fifth game.”

Goal.com

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