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Could Canada overtake Mexico next cycle?


One American

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Since I've been accused of being a pessimist recently ..... :)

I think this is more possible than we might think. I was watching a USMNT podcast the other day after the TnT game. The host said Mexico was going to be on the downslope after the 2022 World Cup. He said they don't have the caliber of player coming up to replace the ones they're going to lose. Upon looking at the ages of their best players, that might be true. In two years:  

  • Ochoa Club America 37
  • Araujo, Celta Vigo 31
  • Moreno, ex-Real Sociedad, 35
  • Dos Santos, LAG, 32
  • Jimenez, Wolverhampton, 31
  • Corona, Porto, 30
  • Herrera, Atletico Madrid, 32

That leaves Lainez, Chucky, and Alvarez out of their Euro contingent. The rest play in LigaMX or MLS.  I'm sure they will be good. But .... as good? 

Could a team headlined by Davies, David, Larin, Eustaquio compete?

 

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okay...I had sympathy for you before, but with this post...now you're trolling. 

I hate seeing these topics. It's a stupid baseless conversation to have. Mexico has been thee best Concacaf team for years. I feel like when these comparisons are brought up, it's as if the person doesn't watch football/is unaware of the actualities. 
 

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Compete, definitely. Overtake in the Octagon standings is possible, but less likely unless our team actually starts to play regularly again and would also require a Mexican underperformance of the sorts we saw them do a couple of cycles back when they finished 4th and had to go through a playoff. 

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11 minutes ago, One American said:

Since I've been accused of being a pessimist recently ..... :)

I think this is more possible than we might think. I was watching a USMNT podcast the other day after the TnT game. The host said Mexico was going to be on the downslope after the 2022 World Cup. He said they don't have the caliber of player coming up to replace the ones they're going to lose. Upon looking at the ages of their best players, that might be true. In two years:  

  • Ochoa Club America 37
  • Araujo, Celta Vigo 31
  • Moreno, ex-Real Sociedad, 35
  • Dos Santos, LAG, 32
  • Jimenez, Wolverhampton, 31
  • Corona, Porto, 30
  • Herrera, Atletico Madrid, 32

That leaves Lainez, Chucky, and Alvarez out of their Euro contingent. The rest play in LigaMX or MLS.  I'm sure they will be good. But .... as good? 

Could a team headlined by Davies, David, Larin, Eustaquio compete?

 

I think this is a bit much. I admit I haven’t looked in depth at Mexico’s upcoming prospects but I find it hard to believe that they’ll just stop producing high in talent all of a sudden. If we could be competitive with then consistently, that’d be great though.

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Looking at how Mexico should look in future cycles based on where their youngsters are today is a fools errand. Sure you can compare club environments with US or Canadian players, and have fun speculating/dreaming, but they are Mexico. They will always be a technical, attacking team, expecting to dominate concacaf. That will always give them the edge.

But if you want to go there, look no further than the young 18 year old Mexican midfielder who is regularly making the bench at Lille. We cream ourselves at Corbeanu doing the exact same thing at Wolves, meanwhile the Mexicans are like "wake us up when he starts playing and scoring".

That's the difference in mentality between Mexico and Canada, or even the USA for that matter. I think that difference in mentality shows in the field too, despite where the Mexicans are playing their club football.

So while Canada and especially the United States are producing strong players in record numbers, I am going to have to see some evidence before I suggest that Mexico is not the king of concacaf.

Edited by Obinna
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I’ve claimed that we could, I don’t think we’re far out from churning out high end prospects, we’re actually almost there and with the Can PL the factory doors have opened. There’s still a ton of talent in QC alone being overlooked or missed, I don’t see why we can’t ? I believe we now how the strongest youth requirement for any league in the world, that’s going to do a lot. 
 

at the youth level we have beat them, if they don’t get some of the duals in MLS and Flores I do think they’re in trouble.

theres the galaxy duo, an LAFC duo, if they sweep LA and Flores we are in tough because that’s going to be a massive boost for them. They really need all 4 though.

 

however, coaching wise Tata has them in top form and he’s a great coach, better than anything on the continent.

 

tata wants to go hard at duals, the LA, Chicago and Texas areas have large Latino populations (Mexican mostlyi believe) and there’s lots of top talent that have played for both sides, the second tier of that may start to opt for the us given how much talent is coming up, but then the tide might turn back when the US matches the big boys in depth. (I don’t think it’s far off until they have a world class xi) but that’s a very fertile talent ground and I’m sure there’s more duals in Miami so Mexico has quite a field to recruit from. There’s just not a whole ton of duals for us in other countries.

Edited by Dominic94
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5 hours ago, Gian-Luca said:

Compete, definitely. Overtake in the Octagon standings is possible, but less likely unless our team actually starts to play regularly again and would also require a Mexican underperformance of the sorts we saw them do a couple of cycles back when they finished 4th and had to go through a playoff. 

I dont think we will ever overtake Mexico but I think that we now have the ability that we can put together a very competitive side in Concacaf and if that side gels well together on occassion and Mexico underperforms, its not out of the realm of possibility that we can top them in the Octagon and even top the group.  But I wouldn't bet on it.

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11 hours ago, Obinna said:

Looking at how Mexico should look in future cycles based on where their youngsters are today is a fools errand. Sure you can compare club environments with US or Canadian players, and have fun speculating/dreaming, but they are Mexico. They will always be a technical, attacking team, expecting to dominate concacaf. That will always give them the edge.

But if you want to go there, look no further than the young 18 year old Mexican midfielder who is regularly making the bench at Lille. We cream ourselves at Corbeanu doing the exact same thing at Wolves, meanwhile the Mexicans are like "wake us up when he starts playing and scoring".

I would tend to agree. However, looking at Mexico recent U17s, basically there's the kid at Lille and a kid at Boavista, then a few in MLS, as far as overseas atm. The rest are in LigaMX for now. Lainez is their top TM U20 value at only $8 million. Then it drop quickly. Although Julian Araujo will go for that much and he's in a tough spot at USMNT right back. 

If two of Canada's young attackers/MF pan out as Big 4-ish contributors by then, then at least the front 6 should be refueled. That seems like a reasonable thing to expect. 

  • Rutty
  • Aniel-Assi
  • Flores
  • Corbeanu
  • Pellegrino
  • Priso
  • MIllar
  • Buchanan
  • Nelson

St. Clair or Pantemis Or Crepeau or one of the Italians slips in at keeper. The of course it's down to the usual thing ...... center back. Which could actually go down. Yikes. 

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I’m not sure if Canada ever “passes” Mexico even within even the next 25+ years.. but this upcoming cycle is important for us to prove to ourselves and everyone in the region that we are a top 3 CONCACAF nation, and therefor a threat to Mexico on any given night.

Edited by N1ckbr0wn
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For the sake of discussion: 

  • Dayne St. Clair, Olympiakos (Greece)
  •  
  • Richie Laryea, Toronto FC
  • Belal Halbouni, Charleroi (Belgium)
  • Callum Montgomery, Minnesota United
  • Alphonso Davies, Bayern Munich (Germany)
  •  
  • Steven Eustaquio, Porto (Portugal)
  • Ralph Priso, Toronto FC
  • Jakhele Marshall-Rutty, Sevilla (Spain)
  • Marcelo Flores, Newcastle (England)
  • Jonathan David, Arsenal (England)
  •  
  • Cyle Larin, West Ham United (England)

 

Mexico

  • Hugo Gonzalez, Monterrey 
  •  
  • Julian Araujo, Wolfsburg (Germany)
  • Nestor Araujo, Club America
  • Carlos Salcedo, UANL
  • Jesus Gallardo, Monterrey
  •  
  • Eugenio Pizzuto, Atletico Madrid (Spain)
  • Edson Alvarez, Ajax (Holland)
  • Hirving Lozano, Napoli (Italy) 
  • Rodolfo Pizarro, Inter Miami
  • Diego Lainez, Real Betis (Spain)
  •  
  • Jose Juan Macias, Chivas

Looking at Mexico, keeper will become a likely problem spot, relative to recent times. On the backline, I gave them J Araujo, because he's just not likely to start for the USMNT with Dest and Reynolds. Although he could. Araujo and Salcedo would be 33 and 30 in 2025 during qualifying. They won't be as good at CF if Jimenez doesn't return to form. He'll be 33 in 2025, besides. The midfield/wings are strong, maybe stronger than now.  Their bench will be stronger than Canada for sure, starting with either Corona or Llanez. 

Anyway, I don't think the Canada team is wildly optimistic. It would only require 2 guys to become Big 4 level players and one an MLS starter. I tried not to overdo it.  Oh, and the center backs. Grrr. 

 

Edited by One American
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Lets wait until we actually beat mexico once, before we talk about surpassing them.  I think maybe Ali Gerba was scoring the goals last time we beat mexico...  This is the worst kind of trolling, he tricks us into slagging our own team by saying this.  Mexico is often in the top 10 FIFA rankings and is always the top of CONCACAF as long as I paid attention to them.  I am more worried about consistently beating Honduras, Jamaica, Haiti etc, then we'll work on Costa RIca.  You need to climb the foothills before you get to Everest eh??  

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15 minutes ago, One American said:

For the sake of discussion: 

  • Dayne St. Clair, Olympiakos (Greece)
  •  
  • Richie Laryea, Toronto FC
  • Belal Halbouni, Charleroi (Belgium)
  • Callum Montgomery, Minnesota United
  • Alphonso Davies, Bayern Munich (Germany)
  •  
  • Steven Eustaquio, Porto (Portugal)
  • Ralph Priso, Toronto FC
  • Jakhele Marshall-Rutty, Sevilla (Spain)
  • Marcelo Flores, Newcastle (England)
  • Jonathan David, Arsenal (England)
  •  
  • Cyle Larin, West Ham United (England)

 

Mexico

  • Hugo Gonzalez, Monterrey 
  •  
  • Julian Araujo, Wolfsburg (Germany)
  • Nestor Araujo, Club America
  • Carlos Salcedo, UANL
  • Jesus Gallardo, Monterrey
  •  
  • Eugenio Pizzuto, Atletico Madrid (Spain)
  • Edson Alvarez, Ajax (Holland)
  • Hirving Lozano, Napoli (Italy) 
  • Rodolfo Pizarro, Inter Miami
  • Diego Lainez, Real Betis (Spain)
  •  
  • Jose Juan Macias, Chivas

Looking at Mexico, keeper will become a likely problem spot, relative to recent times. On the backline, I gave them J Araujo, because he's just not likely to start for the USMNT with Dest and Reynolds. Although he could. Araujo and Salcedo would be 33 and 30 in 2025 during qualifying. They won't be as good at CF if Jimenez doesn't return to form. He'll be 33 in 2025, besides. The midfield/wings are strong, maybe stronger than now.  Their bench will be stronger than Canada for sure, starting with either Corona or Llanez. 

Anyway, I don't think the Canada team is wildly optimistic. It would only require 2 guys to become Big 4 level players and one an MLS starter. I tried not to overdo it.  Oh, and the center backs. Grrr. 

 

That reads like an American roster in terms of club strength, but even you guys have not overtaken Mexico yet, despite having players at Barcelona, Juventus, Chelsea, Man City, Dortmund, Lille, Bremen, Wolfsburg, PSV, Roma, Genk, etc.

So this discussion is a little premature if you guys have not even overtaken Mexico yet.

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6 minutes ago, Bison44 said:

Lets wait until we actually beat mexico once, before we talk about surpassing them.  I think maybe Ali Gerba was scoring the goals last time we drew mexico...  This is the worst kind of trolling, he tricks us into slagging our own team by saying this.  Mexico is often in the top 10 FIFA rankings and is always the top of CONCACAF as long as I paid attention to them.  I am more worried about consistently beating Honduras, Jamaica, Haiti etc, then we'll work on Costa RIca.  You need to climb the foothills before you get to Everest eh??  

FYP

It did feel like a win though, so you are forgiven :)

Edited by Obinna
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13 minutes ago, Obinna said:

That reads like an American roster in terms of club strength, but even you guys have not overtaken Mexico yet, despite having players at Barcelona, Juventus, Chelsea, Man City, Dortmund, Lille, Bremen, Wolfsburg, PSV, Roma, Genk, etc.

So this discussion is a little premature if you guys have not even overtaken Mexico yet.

Yeah, but the next time we play them full strength, we'll beat them. Especially with the Jimenez situation.

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2 minutes ago, One American said:

Yeah, but the next time we play them full strength, we'll beat them. Especially with the Jimenez situation.

We shall see. You guys have the talent to pull it off, but it still has to happen. Kind of like Canada has the talent to qualify for the World Cup, but we need to see it.

If the USA can finish ahead of Mexico in WCQ, that would make me a believer.  

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Just now, Obinna said:

We shall see. You guys have the talent to pull it off, but it still has to happen. Kind of like Canada has the talent to qualify for the World Cup, but we need to see it.

If the USA can finish ahead of Mexico in WCQ, that would make me a believer.  

I mean the difference is that the US has beaten or drawn Mexico numerous times in the last 10 years. I’m not saying they will “overtake” them but it wouldn’t be a shock given their respective results and head to head matches.

 

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