As is usually the case with youth squads, the Mexico U-22 team that they have sent to Copa America is very short on experience. That's not exactly where you want to be in the South American championships at all, let alone in a group with a semifinalist from last year's World Cup and another team that qualified for the knockout stages. So as El Tri head into their first match of the tournament against Chile, they don't really know exactly what they can expect from their 23-man team.
Copa America 2011, Mexico Vs. Chile: El Tri Short On Experience
It's shocking just how inexperienced this Mexico team is. Take away Giovani dos Santos' 45 caps and Paul Aguilar's 16 and the rest of the Mexico team has a combined 27 caps. 10 players have never made a senior international appearance and only three players on the entire roster have scored internationally.
That last point is most jarring. Only three players have scored goals for the senior team and that is what Mexico will have to figure out in Copa America. They were always going to be young and inexperienced, but they did have quite the collection of talent. That is until eight players were suspended from the team for six months in a prostitution scandal, with many their top offensive players, severely weakening the attack. Now it is just dos Santos and some other guys going forward.
Mexico can defend, but inexperience could very bite them there. That tends to happen at the back where one mistake is all it takes to give away a match. How exactly do you win with a team as inexperienced as Mexico’s? In short, you don’t.
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