New Coach on Hot Seat for Mexico

Ricardo Antonio Lavolpe Quarchione turns 52 on Thursday, but he isn’t sure yet whether he will have anything to celebrate.

A lot depends on what happens at the Coliseum tonight at 7:30, when he makes his debut as Mexico’s national soccer coach. It’s a job with great prestige and even greater pressure. Many seek it but few last in it for long.

The Tricolores are one of the leading teams in the world, invariably ranked in the top 10, but they are also prone to inconsistency, political squabbling and self-destruction.

Tonight they play Argentina in the first game of the Lavolpe era. The choice of opponent lends a certain piquancy to the encounter since Lavolpe, now a Mexican citizen, was born in Buenos Aires and was the No. 3 goalkeeper on Argentina’s 1978 World Cup-winning team.

A quarter-century has passed since then, however, and Lavolpe’s loyalties now lie with Mexico. In the three months since he was appointed as the successor to Javier Aguirre, Lavolpe has quickly felt the heat. He has been sniped at by UNAM coach and former Mexico striker Hugo Sanchez, who wanted the job but didn’t get it.

He has seen some of his top players walk out of training camp to return to their club teams, which pay their salaries and hold their contracts. He has watched star forward Cuauhtemoc Blanco engage in a battle of words with Lavolpe’s boss, Alberto de la Torre, president of the Mexican soccer federation.

And all of that has just been in the past week. Amid all of this, Lavolpe has kept his focus, realizing that if he is to build a team that can successfully qualify for the 2006 World Cup in Germany and, once there, improve the 2002 performance, it will require patience and hard work. To prepare for his debut tonight, Lavolpe last week made a quick trip to Honduras.

There, on a rainy evening in San Pedro Sula, he watched as Argentina rebounded well from an early setback to dismantle Honduras, 3-1. It was an encouraging result for Lavolpe for two reasons. The fact that the Argentines produced a spirited performance despite not having any of their European-based players was good news because it means they should provide Mexico tonight with the sort of test Lavolpe wants. More important, the match suggested that Honduras has perhaps slipped a notch since narrowly failing to qualify for the Korea/Japan World Cup.

In a region where Mexico has long been the traditional power, Costa Rica, the United States and Honduras have all closed the gap so that now there is little to choose among them.

Any evidence, therefore, that one of its pursuers is fading is welcome news to Mexico.

In an interview with the Honduran newspaper Tiempo, Lavolpe made it clear that he expects Mexico to regain the top spot in the CONCACAF region that many believe now is held by the U.S. The fact that Mexico finished behind Costa Rica in qualifying for the 2002 World Cup and was knocked out of that tournament in the second round by the U.S. is seen by Lavolpe as something that should spur his team to greater effort.

“If Mexico wishes to demonstrate that it is still the giant that it is supposed to have been all along, it will have to work and show it on the field,” he told Tiempo. “To accomplish that, we want to put together a good team, a competitive team, and we will start to see this in the Gold Cup [in July].”

As for his critics, especially Sanchez, Lavolpe remains unconcerned.

“My objective is to work,” he said, “to dedicate the necessary hours to the team and not be concerned with criticism. If we get good results, it will shut a lot of mouths.”

On paper, Mexico has the stronger lineup tonight, which means the first of those “good results” is possible. Mexico has the more experienced roster, but having seen Argentina slam three goals past Honduras and knowing that five of the Argentines were on the team that won the FIFA World Youth Championship in 2001, Lavolpe is cautious.

“We’re better from the midfield forward than we are from the midfield back,” he said Monday in Mexico City. “That [defense] is where we have to work a bit more.”

For Argentina, under Coach Marcelo Bielsa, tonight’s game will be the second in a three-game tour. On Saturday, it plays the U.S. in Miami’s Orange Bowl.

Comparing how Mexico and the U.S. do against the same opponent will provide an early indication of which should be seen as the region’s top team.

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Times Staff Writer Fernando Dominguez contributed to this story.