The rules of the World Cup stipulates that each national team can take only 23 men for the tournament. At the end it’s always a complicated thing to do for the managers to tell a few players that their World Cup dreams will be over before even starting, but it’s even harder for the coaches and crueler for the players when the squad has 24 players, and only one will be thanked, greeted and sent home. This is what happened to Mexico, Javier Aguirre needed to make a call, and he did. Jonathan dos Santos is not going to South Africa.

The options were more than one, the controversy will follow, but the fact is that the youngster from the FC Barcelona “B” won’t take part of the final team for El Tri, and his father Geraldo dos Santos didn’t take it well as he said to Mexican television that his son won’t ever play again for the Mexican National Football team.

Third test in Europe before the World Cup for Mexico, the rival today the number 93 in the FIFA World Ranking the mostly unknown team of Gambia. In general an easy game, with good and again bad things. The good: five goals, confidence for some players, a victory for the team and an overall positive performance. The bad: even when scoring five goals, once again the team missed a great number of chances, the defense the same way they struggled in Wembley on the corners, suffered against The Scorpions that scored with a header after a corner, the only goal in the Mexican victory for 5-1.

Mexico did get a victory, but let’s not fool ourselves Gambia didn’t give a great opposition, and the most important things from this match could be that Adolfo El Bofo Bautista and Javier Chicharito Hernández scored twice, and maybe this could help El Bofo to make the final 23 men squad for the WC, but the final word will be said by Javier Aguirre tomorrow.

I wake up today as a regular day, then I turned my head a bit, and looked at the calendar and as usual time flies and to my surprise the World Cup is just 2 weeks away, it seems just yesterday that Italy got the title in Berlin, but since then, Brazil captured the Copa América and the Confederations Cup, Spain finished with 48 years of failures to win the EURO 2008, Egypt won not one, but two African Cup of Nations, however they got out of the World Cup in a playoff game against Algeria. Iraq, yes Iraq! won the Asian Cup bringing some joy to the country, while Australia switched from Oceania to Asia to get better chances to qualify for the Cup leaving the path clear to New Zealand to claim the title in the middle of the Pacific.

And in the other Confederation the USA won the Gold Cup in 2007, they also made it to the Final of the Confederations Cup last year, and then something happened that at least to me is kind of blurry. At the end of July last year in a time of the year when football is not too common, Mexico crushed the United States 5-0 to claim the Gold Cup in New Jersey, but just 10 months later, I asked myself, did that really happened?, did all this things occurred in just four years? I pinched myself, and yeah, the World Cup is just around the corner, and Mexico and the World are ready.

Second game of the Mexican Team in Europe prior the World Cup, the rival this time one of the best national teams in the world if we talk about controlling the ball, and showing an offensive style, the Netherlands. And Mexico showed two different sides during this game, the first half was a disaster, the Dutch controlled every aspect and they had several opportunities to score, while El Tri with an alternative formation compared with the one used against England had no ideas, no game, no chances, and were lucky to only received two goals.

Mexico looked bad, performed poorly and the weather didn’t help with the control of the ball. Javier Hernández and Cuauhtémoc Blanco were not to be found, in a zone of the pitch where the guys in green took the ball very few times in the most difficult 45 minutes for El Tricolor getting ready for South Africa.

We are getting closer to the World Cup, with all the national teams set and ready with their preparations for South Africa, but there’s a team that started their WC pre-season well before the rest. I’m talking about Mexico. Back in March when in England, Spain or Italy the race for the national titles was the hot topic, the guys of Javier Aguirre were already getting ready for the opening game of the biggest football event on the planet.

But, even with the Mexicans already gathering experience and minutes playing together, there is a major problem with the team, lack of goals!