When a new coach ascends to lead Mexico’s national team, fans say he is sitting in “la silla mas caliente” – the hottest seat in town; one that can also burn. Usually the coach arrives with a new idea, a new vocabulary, a new promise. For a while, everyone agrees that something has changed.
Then comes the first bad night. The new idea becomes a failed experiment; the promise, another deception; the coach becomes just another name on a long list of those who were supposed to fix Mexican soccer, but couldn’t. Rafael “Rafa” Márquez, the former star player turned coach, is only a month into his tenure coaching El Tri and the old machine is already grinding.
The Mexican press is running think-pieces on whether his hiring was the right decision, and the headlines are scathing. Márquez was part of the coaching staff, working under manager Javier Aguirre, that oversaw Mexico’s best performance at the 2026 World Cup in decades. Under their leadership, the team managed to overcome a psychological barrier that had haunted them since 1986, the last time they won a knockout stage game.
This time around they beat Ecuador in the last-32 before a brave loss to England, raising the hopes of an entire nation that a long-running curse of underperformance had finally been lifted. Then came Mexico’s first four friendly matches after the World Cup, and a starkly different picture began to emerge: a 1-1 draw against Colombia, another 1-1 draw against Peru, and, on Saturday in Arizona, a 3-0 defeat to the United States. Tuesday’s 2-0 loss against Chile was salt in the wound.
Four matches, one downward spiral. First, Colombia: optimism. Then, United States: despair.
And finally Chile: nightmare. It’s not just the heavy defeat to their arch-rival, the United States. It’s that the triumphant World Cup team seemed to have found something special that they are now seeking desperately to regain.
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