After a draw against Costa Rica, the Tri Femenil will finish its run in the Revelations Cup against who’s maybe the strongest team in the competition, Colombia, on Tuesday at 8 p.m. local time.
The hosts and Colombians are tied in points and goals, having both gotten a draw against Costa Rica and a 1-0 win against Nigeria.
The game against the Ticas was the typical “Tale of Two Halves” with Mexico dominating the opponent in the first 45 minutes but failing to convert its chances. In the second half, coach Pedro López started to make changes in the lineup but the players that came in didn’t have the expected impact.
Charlyn Corral & Kiana Palacios duo
It was interesting to see the top goalscorers of the league playing together right from the get-go. Every ball Palacios touches always brings danger to the opponent’s box and that was no exception in this game. Nonetheless, something she might need to improve is her positioning and timing inside the box. If we look at her touches map, we can see she didn’t register many touches inside the box in the first half and none in the second.
It is true that the Club América goalscorer usually doesn’t need more than one touch to score, as she proved with her goal in this game, but one would expect her to be more involved in the final third. This was more accentuated in the second half when she didn’t even touch the ball inside the box, nor she tried to shoot.
Despite this, López only had words of praise for her.
“She is in a great moment of her career, and is the best at exploiting the defense’s weaknesses. It is no coincidence that she scores so many goals. I think we are seeing the best version of her and when, as a player, you feel that, everything gets better,” the manager said after the game.
Leaving Palacios aside, López needs to keep building chemistry between the attackers and they need to be better at taking their chances. Mexico created many great goal opportunities but although they had numbers in the box, none of the players could finish them. Well, none except for Palacios.
Karla Nieto
El Tri played with a double pivot formed by Karla Nieto and Alexia Delgado. They deserve an especial mention, especially the Pachuca midfielder who had a good game against the ticas.
In the following videos, you can see her vision with a trough pass and then with a long pass, both sent to Daniela Espinosa.
Nieto not only has great game vision but also, she helped in defense when Mexico needed her the most. In the following videos, you can see how they lose the ball in the midfield and how she teams up with Jocelyn Orejel and Miah Zuazua to recover possession.
A long ball puts Mexico’s defense to the test. Orejel goes after the ball and recovers it. Then she passes it to Zuazua who leans on Nieto, who went back to help the defense line. She then feints to leave her marker behind.
In the following video, you can see Nieto stopping an attack. She forces the Costa Rican to slow down and search for another option instead of charging at full speed.
México could’ve won this game but lost their track in the second half. Aerial duels lost proved to be key in this game. Rocky Rodríguez sent a warning in the first minutes of the match, almost scoring a header. She then got another opportunity at the beginning of the second half and this time, she didn’t miss.
Nikki Hernández, who’s playing very well at Club América, didn’t have the desired impact when she was subbed in and Scarlett Camberos, her teammate in América, didn’t have a good game. Those two have become very important for the national team in the past months and México needs them to do their utmost when given the opportunity on the field.
Their third test against Colombia will be like a final, where they will must use all they have learned in the past two games. This new start in this new era looks promising but that was also the case under Monica Vergara’s tenure and we already know how that ended.
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