CHICAGO — Mexico arrived in Illinois on Sunday night and didn't receive the reception the national team is used to getting.
One of Mexico's sports dailies, Record, wrote: "Fans give a cold reception to the national team in Chicago." It seems that rather than supporters turning up to the airport in droves, which is a regular occurrence for El Tri, many fans in Chicago elected to spend their Sunday night doing something other than staking out the airport.
Truthfully, it probably was welcomed from players who didn't have to attend to the masses of photo-seekers and autograph hunters. Tuesday's friendly against Panama will be played at a stadium full of fans dressed in green and urging on the Mexican team.
¡Ya estamos en Chicago! #RendirseJamás pic.twitter.com/rOtJnhycww
— Selección Nacional (@miseleccionmx) October 9, 2016
That's fine, and it's sort of the point of these tour matches Mexico participates in every year, with Chicagoland the fifth spot where El Tri have played a friendly in the U.S. in 2016. But with so many matches to be played stateside, Mexico misses out on something other teams get a healthy dose of during nearly every international break: adversity.
While most of its rivals in the final round of World Cup qualification went on the road (the U.S. to Cuba's bumpy pitch in a stadium where a manual scoreboard is still de rigueur, Costa Rica going all the way to Russia to secure victory, and Trinidad and Tobago required to during Caribbean Cup qualification), Mexico has two games in front of favorable crowds.
This was a difficult window in which to find games, with the majority of nations playing World Cup qualification matches. But with a date with the U.S. in Columbus, Ohio, just a month away, Mexico's depth players who are a part of this call-up would benefit from coming up against some sort of test, whether it's posed by the weather or fans in the stadium. It doesn't look like Mexico will get much of a test, though.
Chicago isn't far from Columbus in the grand scheme of things, and perhaps that's part of why Bridgeview's Toyota Field was selected to host this game. But rather than a bone-chilling night, Tuesday's forecast calls for perfect conditions. That's great for fans and will give a better chance for a quality spectacle, but it won't go too far toward readying the team for its first Hex contest (though the forecasts for Columbus don't look too foreboding at the moment, either). Panama's team full of young prospects also won't give much of a hint at what Juan Carlos Osorio's men will be facing when they travel to Panama City.
Again, this window made scheduling difficult, but the fact that difficult atmospheres are so few and far between for Mexico make it tougher for their players to cope when they do go into those environments during World Cup qualification or in major tournaments. Trips to the Netherlands and Belarus in the November 2014 friendly window provided moments that Mexico could learn from and showed the players things they never would've seen otherwise.
Since then, most things have been comfortable for Mexico, smooth sailing. Well, at least away from the field. On the pitch, there have been a few struggles. But when the crowd that U.S. Soccer has carefully curated to be full of only U.S. supporters greets Mexico in November, it will be an unfamiliar feeling for the group as a unit.
Saying the team got a cold reception Sunday is a bit hyperbolic, but El Tri would benefit from dealing with some hardship. For now, they will have to do without.
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