It was the first Friendly match that the United States has played on Mexican soil in more than a decade.
Judging by the performance, they might be hoping it’s their last for a while.
Although the U.S. side was decisively shorthanded, they possess a less-than-ideal record against Mexico in Mexico. While the U.S. has had considerable success against El Tri in recent times, including a 2-0 Nations League final win and a Nations League semi-final win in 2023, this was the first victory Mexico has recorded against the United States since 2019 — also a friendly.
Usual U.S. starters Weston McKennie, Ricardo Pepi, Zack Steffen, and Christian Pulisic were all missing in action, due to a variety of injuries and workload management. Pochettino has only had a brief amount of time with the current US squad for this October camp — mostly made up of fringe players for the Mexico match.
“Overall, I think Mexico was a little bit better than us and fully deserved the victory,” Pochettino said in his post-match press conference. “But for us it’s a process that we started 10 days ago, and today was a great opportunity for our player to visit a very difficult place to play. I think only we can improve and learn from this experience.”
While Pochettino admitted he would have loved a full-strength squad, he said it was a great opportunity to see other talent first-hand.
“We all feel disappointed because I think we didn’t have all the players that we wanted to have when we started,” he said. “We lost some players for different reasons and we arrived a little bit short here.
“I say thank you to the players [who played vs. Mexico] because they were amazing, professional and the behavior was amazing. And that’s it. It’s only a game that we lose, of course, in Mexico.
“We wanted to win. I think we need to be positive about this type of game. We need to play more games like this to improve the knowledge that we have.”
Now that this international camp has concluded, the players will now depart back to their clubs. The next USMNT match is set to be in the Concacaf Nations League Quarter-final vs Jamaica in a two-legged affair, on November 14th and 18th respectively.
