Mexico upset by ‘minnows’
“I IMAGINE THAT WE’LL QUALIFY ON Saturday because this team is looking really good,” Ricardo La Volpe, the Mexico coach, said before his team’s match against the United States on Saturday. He was wrong.
In no mood to eat his words, however, he came up with some more. “It’s a little team,” La Volpe said of his team’s opponents afterwards. “Here, everyone’s interested in baseball and American football and many people didn’t even know that a soccer match was being played today. So it’s easy for them, because they aren’t playing under any pressure. My mother, my grandmother or my great grandmother could play in a team like that. They scored a goal and then they sat back.”
Mexico, unbeaten in their previous 14 qualifying matches and two points behind the US, who knocked them out of the 2002 World Cup, still need one point from their final three games to qualify. They are at home to Panama on Wednesday. It was the first time since 1934 that the US were the first team from their region to qualify for the finals.
“It’s definitely getting a worldwide audience for this rivalry and that’s only because now we are able to step up and play at the level that Mexico has been playing at for generations,” Kasey Keller, the former Tottenham Hotspur goalkeeper, said before the match. “There was no rivalry before. It was pretty much just Mexico beat us. Now it’s really grown into something big and something that the region has really cried out for.”
UPDATE 1-Mexico posts $650 mln 3Q current account deficit
Mexico posted a $650 million current account deficit in the third quarter of this year following a $19 million deficit in the second quarter, the country's central bank said on Tuesday.
The accumulated current account deficit in the first nine months of the year was equivalent to 0.7 percent of gross domestic product.
Analysts in a Reuters poll had predicted Mexico would post a third-quarter current account deficit of $1.226 billion.
"It's clearly far better than expected, and another sign that exports are doing much better than had been feared," said Christian Stracke, lead
Fox ally falls behind in elections
Santiago Creel’s aspirations to represent Mexico’s ruling National Action party (PAN) in presidential elections next year were upset on Sunday, when Felipe Calderon comfortably won the first round of the party’s internal elections to select its candidate.
The surprising result left Mr Creel, who resigned as interior secretary in June to pursue his high-profile candidacy, with just 35.5 per cent of the vote, compared with 45.7 per cent for Mr Calderon. Mr Creel is thought to be President Vicente Fox’s favoured successor.
“Calderon is now the odds-on favourite to easily win,” said Federico Estevez, a
Mexico criticised over lack of human rights progress
Mexican President Vicente Foxs record on human rights has been disappointing in spite of pledges to put the issue at the top of the governments agenda, a rights group said on Wednesday.
Under Mr Fox, whose six-year term ends in December, Mexico has yet to establish accountability for past atrocities or to make serious progress in curbing the abuses that continue to be committed on a regular basis, said US-based Human Rights Watch in a report.
The findings are almost certain to upset Mr Fox, who in 2000 ended 71 years of rule by the
Don't expect a huge crowd in Mexico
Go for it. You know something's phony when the NFL doesn't blow its own horn. Take Sunday night when league history will be made by playing the first regular-season game outside of the United States.
The game is in Mexico City at Estadio Azteca. But there's been hardly a promotional peep.
The catch is that the teams are the Arizona Cardinals and the San Francisco 49ers. That's like promising diamonds and sending zirconia. In the case of the Cardinals, cheap zirconia.
No wonder the NFL has abandoned its original prediction of 105,000 fans. Oh, check that
MEXICO CITY, Aug 18 (Reuters) - He married Mexico's richest woman, is an old pal of U.S. President George W. Bush and now Washington's envoy south of the Rio Grande is stirring up controversy in a dispute over crime and immigration on the U.S.-Mexican border.
U.S. Ambassador Tony Garza upset Mexico this week by boasting he had shut a consular office in a border city to "punish" the country for failing to halt a drug war there.
It was the latest in a series of run-ins with Mexico's government that have earned Garza a reputation as a bully who, despite his Hispanic
