Due to their loss in the Gold Cup semifinal, the United States men’s national team has to play one more match to clinch their spot in the Confederations Cup. That game comes against Mexico, the winners of this summer’s CONCACAF championship, and the majority of the crowd at the Rose Bowl will be wearing El Tri colors.
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El Tri hasn’t beat Jurgen Klinsmann’s USMNT, but they’ll have to do it on Saturday to make the Confederations Cup.
Three of Mexico’s last four managers have faced Jurgen Klinsmann and all have failed to defeat him. Ricardo Ferretti -- who is the interim coach, set to step down after this game win or lose -- will attempt to break that trend on Saturday. The U.S. won their last friendly against Mexico, and their last competitive game as well.
There’s some speculation that a loss in this game could cause U.S. Soccer to reconsider Klinsmann’s position, due to his team’s poor performance at the Gold Cup and loss to Brazil just over a month later. A loss by the Olympic qualifying team earlier in the day certainly doesn’t help matters. But Klinsmann is still owed a lot of money on his contract, which is part of the reason U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati has implied that Klinsmann’s job is safe regardless of the result of this match.
The United States lost Alejandro Bedoya to illness just prior to this game and have called up Bobby Wood to replace him. Wood is a forward, while Bedoya plays central midfield or right win, so it's hardly a like-for-like replacement. Mexico are without Giovano dos Santos and "Maza" Francisco Rodriguez due to injury, but Andres Guardado and Rafa Marquez are in the squad despite recent fitness concerns.
Match Date/Time: Sat., 9:30 p.m. ET, 6:30 p.m. local
Venue: Rose Bowl, Pasadena, Calif.
TV: FOX Sports 1 (US - English), Univision Deportes (US - Spanish), TDN, Azteca (Mexico)
Online: There are quite a few different ways to catch this game online in the United States. For most viewers, the easiest will be Fox Sports Go. That's free if you have a TV subscription to Fox Sports 1. If that doesn't work for you, there's also Fox Soccer 2 Go, a paid service that doesn't require a TV package. If you don't have either service or just prefer to watch the game in Spanish, it's also streaming on Univision Deportes en vivo.
