Mexico, Gold Cup’s defending champions and winningest team in history, will start their title defense with a roster full of new faces, which is mainly due to the sanctions stemming from the match-fixing scandal last 2013. The team will be sporting a whole bunch of young, inexperienced footballers, most of which were recently called up from the domestic league.
Adding to the adversity will be the absence head coach Juan Carlos Osorio, who got slapped with a six-match suspension following his outburst in the team’s disappointing fourth-place finish at the Confederations Cup.
Don’t be mislead, though, El Tri is still well-coached and able to put together a competitive and promising roster, one that could create a lot of noise in the tournament. The group had good performances in the pair of friendlies just over a week ago – 1-0 against Ghana last June 28th and 2-1 against Paraguay last July 1st.
Key striker Alan Pulido broke his arm in the Paraguay match and he’ll be out for four months, but the team has since picked up Houston Dynamo’s Erik “Cubo” Torres to fill the void. Torres had 12 goals in 18 Major League Soccer games for the Dynamo.
El Tri has won six straight against El Salvador, and they’ll be bringing in an attack that scores 1.83 goals per match in their last six home matches.
La Selecta earned their berth in the Gold Cup after a great showing at the Copa Centroamericana, where they ended up third behind Panama and Honduras. It matched their best finish in a regional tournament.
Although the team then went on to be winless in their two friendlies in the United States – 2-2 draw against Honduras and 3-0 loss to Ecuador – the surprising third place finish in Panama should still be a good confidence-booster, especially when they are a low-ranked club (listed 103rd by FIFA) who’s about to go against a Mexico team that they haven’t had much success with.
Leading the upset-minded El Salvador will be Darwin Ceren, one of the San Jose Earthquakes’ main guys, Rodolfo Zelaya, a great scorer that has eight Gold Cup goals and 20 international strikes under his name, and Nelson Bonilla, a well-rounded and experienced striker that has seen action for teams in Romania and Portugal, among others.
Writer’s Prediction
Mexico (-500) wins comfortably, 2-0, but El Salvador showing some fight shouldn’t be surprising as well.
