\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t The Mexican men\u2019s national football team secured a solid 2-0 victory over Ecuador at Azteca Stadium on Tuesday and advanced to the 2026 World Cup round of 16. The hosts will now face the winner of Wednesday\u2019s match between England and DR Congo.<\/p>\n
After a delayed start due to storms in Mexico City, the hosts came out of the gates swinging.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the 22nd minute, striker Julian Qui\u00f1ones broke away with the ball from his own half, opened up a window for himself, and put a powerful shot into the top corner of Ecuador\u2019s goal to give the home team a 1-0 lead.<\/p>\n
Just nine minutes later, Qui\u00f1ones did it again, holding up the ball and assisting striker Ra\u00fal Jim\u00e9nez for the 2-0.<\/p>\n
With the hard work already done, Mexico switched to defending the lead in the second half, although it still managed to get some serious chances to score against an Ecuadorian team that was unable to create solid chances.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the 95th minute of stoppage time, Ecuadorian defender Piero Hincapi\u00e9 was sent off after the Video Assistant Referee (VAR) spotted him covering his mouth while speaking to Santiago Gim\u00e9nez.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hincapi\u00e9 became the second player\u00a0 \u2014 after Paraguay\u2019s Miguel Almir\u00f3n \u2014 to get sent off under this new rule, born out of the controversy between forwards Gianluca Prestianni and Vinicius Jr.<\/p>\n
It did little to change the game that Mexico saw off with a 2-0 win. The Tri is running high in the tournament, having won all four of its matches and scoring eight goals. It is also one of only two teams, along with Spain, yet to concede a goal.<\/p>\n
It also marked the first time a team from CONCACAF, the North American football organizing body, defeated one from CONMEBOL, its South American counterpart, in a World Cup single-elimination game.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mexico head coach Javier Aguirre was elated by the result.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve had some great wins, but none like today\u2019s,\u201d he said after the match. \u201cAt home, with our people, and doing what we had to do. It\u2019s a perfect night.\u201d<\/p>\n
Aguirre, who has had three separate stints at the helm of the Mexico national team, admitted he was \u201cvery hurt\u201d after missing out on getting to the fifth World Cup game at the 2002 and 2010 tournaments.<\/p>\n
The fifth game curse Between 1994 and 2018, Mexico suffered seven consecutive World Cup exits in the Round of 16, leading to the notion that the team had a \u201cfifth game\u201d curse, unable to advance past that stage.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While the team has now reached a fifth game, it\u2019s worth noting that the stage they\u2019re at is the same as before, since the 2026 World Cup is the first to feature an eight-game run to the final.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis means a lot to me,\u201d Aguirre said. \u201cRight now, our bond with the fans pushes us forward; we\u2019re playing in a great stadium. We play until we\u2019re exhausted, to our limit, so it\u2019s a beautiful night for Mexican people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sebasti\u00e1n Beccacece waves goodbye at Ecuador It certainly wasn\u2019t as nice a night for Ecuador head coach Sebasti\u00e1n Beccacece. The Argentine trainer confirmed he\u2019ll be stepping down from his position after coming down from the high of beating Germany to elimination on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s my turn to say goodbye to a beautiful family,\u201d he said after the match. \u201cI\u2019m thankful, at peace with myself and calm. We gave it our all, we worked non-stop.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Argentine coach admitted that, with his contract set to expire at the end of the World Cup, he won\u2019t be looking to renew his involvement with the Ecuadorian national team.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe played an amazing group stage. Today, the first half wasn\u2019t up to the standards we set,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Cover image: Selecci\u00f3n Mexicana Twitter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Mexican men\u2019s national football team secured a solid 2-0 victory over Ecuador at Azteca Stadium on Tuesday and advanced to the 2026 World Cup round of 16. The hosts will now face the winner of Wednesday\u2019s match between England and DR Congo. After a delayed start due to storms in Mexico City, the hosts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":84344,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5063,779,66,1097,67,339],"tags":[5307,19818,1368,10307,1369,3576],"class_list":["post-84343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-2026-world-cup","category-ecuador","category-football","category-mexico","category-sports","category-world-cup-2026","tag-2026-world-cup","tag-ecuador","tag-football","tag-mexico","tag-sports","tag-world-cup-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}