TORONTO – It was classic Miguel Herrera, a performance for the ages.
Minutes after his team’s 3-1 loss to Toronto FC in the first leg of the CONCACAF Champions League semifinals on Tuesday night, the Club America manager strode into the press room at BMO Field like an attorney walking into a court room who knew his client was guilty.
But he still had a job to do, which was to mount a defence, no matter how flimsy, in the vain hope he could somehow hoodwink the jury into acquitting his client.
It didn’t work. How could it, really? The evidence was clear. By all objective measures, TFC was the better side on the night, and was full value for its win, deservedly taking the advantage into next week’s return match at Estadio Azteca in Mexico City.
To hear Herrera tell it, though, Club America was victimized by the referees all night, starting before a ball was even kicked when they walked into the locker room and told his players to change their underwear.
“They influenced the game from the beginning,” Herrera told reporters through a translator.
“When they came into our locker room to check the players, they said they had to change the colour of their underpants because it was black. I had a feeling from the start that [the game] was conditioned by the refereeing, which in my opinion was not at the level [required] of this semifinal.”
He later added: “I want a referee team that can come and call an important semifinal.”
Long-time followers of Mexican soccer know exactly what’s going on here. Over the years, the combustible Herrera has turned deflecting from his team’s shortcomings on the pitch into an art form. He’s renowned for his sharp and exuberant disagreement with referees. Losses are someone else’s fault – it’s never on him or his players. He’s always working the system, always looking to gain the psychological edge. Always.
Herrera was also telling tall tales of Toronto policemen assaulting two of his players and one of his assistant coaches in the tunnel at halftime as the teams made their way back to their respective locker rooms. That’s a very serious accusation, one refuted by Toronto coach Greg Vanney, who claimed he saw the entire incident unfold.
It’s also pretty rich coming from Herrera – he was infamously fired as Mexican national team coach three years ago after assaulting a critical reporter at the Philadelphia International Airport. Considering Herrera’s lack of credibility and well-earned reputation as a bloviating blowhard, his comments need to be taken with an entire silo of salt, never mind a measly grain.
Herrera’s misdirection gambit on Tuesday night was designed to stoke the fires, to get the Mexican media on his side in the buildup to next week’s second leg, and to rile the crowd who will file into Estadio Azteca.
The Club America manager insisted he wasn’t trying to start a controversy in order to motivate his players, or mount a pre-emptive strike to get the refs on his side for the second leg. In fact, that’s exactly what he was doing, and everybody in the press room, including the Mexican journalists in attendance, knew it.
Herrera’s hopelessly transparent ploy shouldn’t disguise the sobering reality that TFC outplayed Club America on Tuesday night, and that the reigning MLS Cup champs are now 90 minutes away from reaching the Champions League final for the first time in franchise history.
Estadio Azteca is an iconic soccer cathedral. It can also be a pretty intimidating place to play for visiting teams, especially when they go up against Club America, historically, one of the most successful sides in Mexican soccer. But Toronto has enough veteran players with international experience, many of whom who have played at Azteca before, that the occasion shouldn’t overwhelm the team as a whole.
What’s more, there is no need for TFC to be intimidated by the situation. The Reds dispatched the Colorado Rapids with relative ease in the second round, and then got past Tigres, another Mexican powerhouse, in the quarter-finals. They followed that up with a convincing win on Tuesday night, and did it minus three key starters in defender Chris Mavinga, fullback Justin Morrow, and influential playmaker Victor Vazquez.
“You can’t win games, as we have over the last two years, just on talent. You need to have a great mentality. … You got to have a group who buys into [the game plan] and works for each other,” Vanney said after the match.
TFC has played stride for stride with Tigres and Club America, not only two of the best teams in Mexico, but two of the best in the entire CONCACAF region. They deserve to be where they are at the moment.
As for Herrera, his tedious act is wearing more than a little thin, and he should heed that wise old adage: Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt.
[relatedlinks]
