Jamaica and Mexico will battle for group honors when they face off in the final group stage game of the 2022/23 CONCACAF Nations League inside Estadio Azteca at 7:00 pm (6:00 pm Jamaica time) on Sunday.
Hosts Mexico leads the three-team home and away standings with seven points from two wins and a draw. Jamaica is next with five points from a win and two draws with Suriname rooted at the bottom with a solitary point.
The winner of Sunday’s game will advance to the Nations League semi-finals.
Jamaica’s Reggae Boyz head coach Heimir Hallgrimsson told the local media just prior to the departing country via a charter flight on Friday that he was expecting a much more structured team than the one that played in the two recent friendly internationals against Trinidad and Tobago.
“We will see a different approach to those games… those against Trinidad were to see [examine] the players, their abilities, how they work within our system, in our working environment, so this time we would like to be more tactical, we would like to be more clinical, we have been practicing for Mexico, so that is a totally different thing.”
He added: “Hopefully you will see a much more structured team. When we played Trinidad it was not about Trinidad, it was about us and who can be with us in the future, seeing a lot of young players and if they are ready now or in a year, now it’s about collective unit.”
On Thursday Mexico defeated Suriname 2-0 on the road but Hallgrimsson says there is hardly anything that can be taken away from that game to help in his plans as the Mexicans played with a much-weakened team.
“I think we cannot take a lot from that match because they will probably play a totally different team against us. They rested a lot of their key players which we expect to be playing against us and tactically it was not much that we could take out of that match to use for what we have already talked about.”
Nonetheless, the Mexicans, who exited the FIFA World Cup Finals at the group stage in Qatar last November, have been hard to beat at home in the high altitude of Mexico City.
But despite the unproven record, Icelander Hallgimsson remains optimistic.
“I am always optimistic. We have a plan, how we think we can hurt them, if that plan works or not we will just have to see, but we go with a plan in mind about how we want to play them. Hopefully, we can have a good performance; if we do then the side effect will be one point of three points.”
