Furthermore the exercise, the environment and the beauty of it all are gorgeous.

Mexico was drawn together with South Africa, France, and Uruguay, in group A, and will play the opening match of the tournament in Johannesburg against the hosts.

While the reaction in both France and South African media seems to have been mostly relieved, I wouldn’t be too optimistic.  Uruguay can be a very tough opponent, and Mexico ended its qualification campaign much better than it started.

The opening match will be crucial and for that there is a couple of things I wanted to bring up:

• Altitude: South Africa and Mexico are used to playing at altitude, so that should not be a factor.
• Home advantage: Certain reports were making a lot of noise about vuvuzelas, the trumpets South African supporters use, and how they would inspire fear in their opponents.  Sorry, bafana bafana, but the Mexicans will just feel right at home if they hear loud blowing horns as that matches the conditions at Azteca Stadium.
• Rankings, team quality, World Cup experience…: I like the South Africans, but the team hasn’t really shown that much lately.  Mexico started qualification in the doldrums and ended on a high.
• Opening match: No host team has lost the opening match in the history of the World Cup.

Now we just have to wait for July to come over, right?

I love biking, ever since I was a small kid.  Now that November has arrived and we have 6 hours of sunlight, you have to be more careful than usual.

The bike needs to have its own light sources at the front and back.

The rider needs to wear a reflective vest on top of his warm clothes.

I was very fortunate to have watched two Eurobasket quarterfinals in Poland (Russia-Serbia & Spain-France).  Spain especially impressed me with their fast handling of the ball, tough defense and great offensive mobility.  This Spanish team has 4 players in the professional leage of North America (soon to be 5) and it shows.  No wonder the “ÑBA” won the championship in the end.

Quite a different story from the Olypic games in Barcelona in 1992, where the Spanish star Jofresa went to ask the American team for their autographs after their game if memory serves me right.

You know the result, you probably also watched the game.  The second consecutive win for Mexico against the US in just a few weeks featured this time the A squads from both sides playing at Azteca Stadium in Mexico City.

The interesting thing for me as a Mexico fan was not only the win, but the way it was achieved.  After the tactical incompetence of the Hugo Sánchez years and the endless tinkering of the Sven-Göran Eriksson times, it was nice to see a team that had a solid base of players based in Mexico and Europe who understood each other.  Furthermore, we saw that some of the U-17 champions of 2005 have made the transition to the senior team well after a shaky start.

The most important lesson, however, was the way this team finally showed (and used) the patience and maturity to win matches against hard-as-nails opposition.  While any other Mexican team would have started to panic after going one goal down against the Americans at the cradle of Mexican football, these guys kept their cool, followed their game plan, moved the ball around and finally scored.  Maybe Rafael Márquez not being there actually helped as he has a long sad history in situations like these with the national team.

El Tri wouldn’t be in this situation if it were not for the complete lack of long term planning by the Mexican Football Federation, but this victory comes at the right time to steady the ship and qualify for South Africa.  We don’t need this rollercoaster the next World Cup cycle, please.

Dangerous downhill

Originally uploaded by Chiva Congelado

(Cántese con la melodía de “El Rey”, de José Alfredo Jiménez)

Un hielito en el camino
me enseñó que mi destino
era bajar y bajar

Bajar y bajar
Bajar y bajar

Después me dijo un reno
que no hay que llegar primero
si no hay que entero arrivar…

Seguramente el maestro Jiménez estará revolcándose en su tumba.