Norway beat Israel 5-0 in the World Cup qualifiers and then donated the prize money they won to Gaza and that’s why everyone should be rooting for them.
Seeing a black immigrant devote his life to the Mexico national team and then proceed to the show the world that he’s an absolute DEMON was so special to me man. Quiñones you’re my fucking hero man 😭
Mexico just won all three of its group games at a single World Cup for the first time in the country's history. Six goals scored, none conceded, three clean sheets against South Africa, South Korea, and Czechia.
Getting out of the group has rarely been Mexico's struggle. From 1994 to 2018 the team advanced past the group stage in seven straight World Cups, one of the steadiest records in the sport. The fall always came one game later. Bulgaria knocked them out in 1994, then Germany, the United States, Argentina twice, the Netherlands, and Brazil. Seven tournaments, seven losses in the first knockout match. Mexican fans built a name around it: el quinto partido, the fifth game they could never reach.
The wait runs deeper than that streak. Mexico has not reached a World Cup quarterfinal since 1986, a 40-year gap, and it has gotten that far only twice in its entire history.
Both of those runs, in 1970 and 1986, happened on home soil. Mexico is hosting again now, co-hosting this World Cup with the United States and Canada, the first nation to host three editions of it. The group games ran through the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City, where Mexico has now played nine World Cup matches without a loss, in front of crowds above 80,000.
That is what gives a perfect group stage its weight here. On its own it is a clean record. Set against 40 years of knockout exits, with the one thing that has ever carried Mexico through, it looks more like a runway. The round that has stopped them for four decades begins July 1.