All Things Mexico

Hirving “Chucky” Lozano is about to join Napoli from PSV Eindhoven for a reported fee of $47 million with his medical scheduled in the coming days, according to NBC Sports. Lozano will sign a five-year deal at the San Paolo and attempt to take his game to the next level under the guidance of manager Carlo Ancelotti and alongside a vaunted attacking unit containing Dries Mertens, Lorenzo Insigne and Arek Milik. 

Last night in Lima, Peru, Honduras upset Mexico after a penalty shootout to advance to the final of the 2019 Pan American Games. It’s a largely meaningless U-22 competition with understrength youth teams, so the Mexican Football Federation won’t be overly bothered by the result, but manager Jaime Lozano will be irked that his side couldn’t hold on to a 1-0 lead with just over 10 minutes remaining.

Especially since that 1-0 lead was built on one of the finest goals of the summer.

Tuesday night, Club América announced the signing of 34-year-old Mexican international Guillermo “Memo” Ochoa from Belgium’s Standard Liège for a reported fee of $1.14 million. The move marks a return to where it all began for Ochoa: the goalkeeper made over 200 appearances for América between 2004 and 2011 before embarking on an eight-year European odyssey.

In a game that looked set to end goalless, André-Pierre Gignac came up big — as he alwasy has for Tigres — and scored an 89th-minute winner versus Pumas on Sunday night. It was his 105th goal for the Monterrey club, making him the team's outright top goalscorer in its history.

¡GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!

England’s best non-top-six club is through to the Europa League third qualifying round thanks to a standout performance from Mexico international Raúl Jiménez on Thursday. The El Tri star scored a brace in Wolves’ 4-1 demolition of Northern Ireland’s Crusaders FC, easing the Premier League side into the next round 6-1 on aggregate. 

When whoever’s in charge of the worst competition ever created sits down to look at their social media numbers, they’ll see that the most liked/shared/commented/engaged with post of the 2019 Leagues Cup was a cat. Hopefully they’ll then decide to make the 2020 edition strictly cats. 

You see, it’s a helluva fine boi.

As someone whose job is soccer all day, everyday, I like to think that I have a pretty good grip on what’s going on, why it’s going on and when it’s going on. In what I feel is a pretty damning indictment of the newfangled Leagues Cup competition, I haven't a goddamn clue on any of those fronts.

Let’s figure out what in the hell this thing is together.

Who Plays In The Leagues Cup?