"It's pointless you asking," said a visibly uncomfortable Sven-Goran Eriksson to Mexican reporters baying for his blood this week. "I've already said that I want to be on the Mexico bench in the World Cup and that is all I have to respond to you."
Mexico's manager was facing the music after Wednesday night's game in which the national squad lost 1-0 in Honduras. The result meant that the team only just scraped into the next stage of the World Cup qualifiers behind Honduras, and ahead of Jamaica on goal difference.
"Kick Him Out, it only costs $4m," screamed the front page of the sports newspaper Record the next day, referring to the buy-out clause in Eriksson's contract, which is a bargain compared with what he could lose Mexico if he stays. Words like shameful, pathetic and mediocre dominated editorial after editorial urging a rethink of Eriksson's position.
"The truth is that Eriksson has not brought anything to the Mexican team," wrote the leading commentator Francisco Javier Gonzalez in Reforma. "His touch is not seen, there is no visible concept, and even the defence that was once the team's great strength is now deeply vulnerable."
Eriksson was always going to have a battle to get Mexicans on his side after being appointed in June. He'd left Manchester City to replace Hugo Sanchez who had been sacked for failing to secure Mexico a place at the Olympics.
At first the Swede was greeted by an outburst of nationalistic outrage that stressed his relative ignorance of Mexican football, his inability to speak Spanish, and his racy reputation. In the event Eriksson has remained free of sexual scandal and has already mastered enough Spanish to handle press conferences mostly on his own. Meanwhile a good proportion of his players don't actually play in Mexico anymore anyway.
The 14 Mexicans at European clubs are, in fact, the main reason so much hope had built up around the team's potential to shake off the self doubt usually blamed for the national team's tradition of disappointing performances in international competitions.
To complement seasoned veterans like the Barcelona defender Rafael Márquez, a new generation was supposed to rise and sparkle for 2010. They include the 19-year-old midfielder Giovani Dos Santos of Tottenham Hotspur and the similarly youthful Arsenal striker Carlos Vela, as well as Andres Guardado of Deportivo la Coruna.
And things didn't start off badly for Eriksson's bid to take Mexico to South Africa. The first three qualifying games, played in the Azteca stadium in Mexico City, produced solid if not particularly stylish victories. Then things began to turn upside down in the group that should have been a walk in the park for a country that once called itself the Giant of Concacaf.
After losing to Jamaica and drawing with Canada the pressure on Eriksson began to grow. In late October his presence at a league game in the northern Mexican city of Toreon was greeted with boos. The embarrassed manager reportedly blushed and sat down very quickly.
"Nothing is certain in football, but I just can't imagine Mexico not going to the World Cup," Eriksson said shortly before Wednesday's game in Honduras which was lost to an own goal, and ended with two players sent off. Eriksson watched impassively throughout, betraying emotion only in the periodic scratching of his head.
After the last few games Mexicans are now fearing the next stage against rivals such as the United States, Costa Rica and Honduras again. Even beating Trinidad and Tobago and El Salvador doesn't seem like a foregone conclusion anymore.
"It's true we're through to the next stage but there we risk losing the dreams of the nation, hundreds of millions of dollars and a golden generation," wrote Record.
But while the media turns its guns on Eriksson, ordinary Mexicans seem more likely to be forgiving, or fatalistic. "It isn't Eriksson's fault," one reader wrote below a blistering editorial on the Reforma newspaper website after Wednesday's match. "We just have to accept that we are no good at football. The fact that we have players in Europe is about globalization, not quality."
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