AUSTIN, Texas — On one side of the U.S.-Mexico rivalry, Mauricio Pochettino was beaming. Admiration flowed onto the field on Saturday after the 2-0 win over Panama. Fans chanted Pochettino’s name, and a banner with his face summed up the consensus atmosphere around the U.S. men’s national team: “BELIEVE.”

On the other hand, in Puebla, Mexico, boos rained down.

It rained for the fifth time in six games after a 2-2 draw with Spanish club Valencia in a friendly that should have provided a pressure-free environment in which to build. But of course there is no such thing in Mexican football. And so, as the USMNT travels south to meet its archrival for the 78th time Tuesday (10:30 p.m. ET, TNT), the atmosphere around it is changing. El Tri is fraught with dissatisfaction and discomfort.

To calm the situation, Mexico fired Jaime Lozano in July and hired its fourth coach in less than two years, Javier Aguirre.

Aguirre spoke in his early days on the track about his desire “to give fans what they are looking for” and to “ensure that all fans go home happy with what they see.”

But toward the end of his second game, a 0-0 draw against Canada in a two-thirds empty AT&T Stadium in Texas, the frustration returned.

And a month later, after Saturday’s draw against a B team from Valencia, fatalism struck.

“Neither (Aguirre) nor anyone else has a ‘magic wand’ to end our football crisis,” popular TUDN pundit David Faitelson wrote on X.

Former fullback Miguel Layun called for “everything” in Mexican football to be questioned, starting with development processes. “You have to do introspection, make a very deep analysis and start correcting from the bottom up – even if it costs us the 2026 World Cup,” Layun said.

The crisis in Mexico cannot be blamed on coaching

The recurring outrage was in many ways counterproductive. In the past, this has hindered continuity and collective growth. But now at least some parts of the Mexican soccer establishment are searching for and reckoning with the source of their pain.

The cause obviously does not lie in the coaching of the seniors of the national team. Tata Martino, the first of four recent managers, was not the reason Mexico crashed out of the 2022 World Cup group. Neither he, nor Lozano, nor any of the eighteen men who coached El Tri in the 21st century, this current group of Mexican players could become football’s elite.

These players, and the systems that shaped them, seem to be the problem. There has long been a contradiction between expectations and reality of the Mexican player pool, but it has become especially pronounced in recent years. In 2018, Mexico could field a starting XI picked mainly from clubs in Europe’s Big Five competitions or the Champions League. In 2024, only three of the current 27-man squad will be playing at that level; 19 of 27 play in Liga MX.

That’s not a dampener on the Mexican league, which remains the pinnacle of North American club football. It is also not an attack on any of those 27 individuals; when they don the green jersey of the national team, they almost always fight hard for the badge, and for each other, and for their country.

But they are not good enough. They have not grown like their predecessors. Liga MX clubs were reluctant to transfer them and were eager to pay for them – keeping them at home, away from the valuable inconvenience of the European circuit, and likely slowing their personal progress, just as staying in the MLS in their mid-20s would . American player.

There are probably many more reasons for the decline in quality; most of these are questionable, some have been diagnosed, others are less clear. The reality is that the current Mexican national team is… relatively ordinary.

Aguirre’s return was marked by constant pressure

So Aguirre came in for the third time to make the save El Tri out of a crisis. He was on the field as a player when Mexico last won a World Cup knockout match (in 1986). Shortly after his retirement, he switched to coaching and managed ten different clubs and three different national teams: Japan, Egypt and his home country Mexico.

During his first two stints at the Mexican helm, starting in 2001 and 2009, Aguirre ignited World Cup qualifying cycles that sputtered. However, when he took charge again in August – this time with former player Rafa Márquez as assistant – he noted that this third assignment is a completely different task.

“There is a project that is not just about saving three World Cup qualifiers,” Aguirre said. He celebrated the long-term vision of the Mexican Football Federation. There are no qualifying tournaments, only friendlies and regional tournaments; and “enough time to put together a good team” between now and the 2026 World Cup.

That was of course also the company line ahead of the 2024 Copa América. In omitting veterans and selecting an experimental squad, sporting director Duilio Davino said: “We want to take advantage of this great opportunity not to think about the immediacy of the outcome, and project our path to 2026.”

Then they reacted to the result, a group stage exit, and fired Lozano – because the pressure cooker never relents.

So there they are again, with an inescapable dissatisfaction. Aguirre and players say they understand.

“The criticism comes because the team is not playing well,” Aguirre acknowledged on Monday. “People have the right to show their dissatisfaction.”

“We know that playing in Mexico is like this,” defender Jesús Orozco Chiquete said on Saturday. “(The fans) are demanding and want results.”

And they are sure the criticism will increase if they don’t win in Guadalajara on Tuesday, against a USMNT missing Christian Pulisic, Weston McKennie and seven other regulars. The Americans would see a loss as understandable; in Mexico, on the other hand, a loss would only raise more alarms.

“To be part of the (Mexican) national team, you have to be prepared for the pressure,” longtime midfielder Andrés Guardado said on Monday. “You have to be willing to face this kind of responsibility.”