The recycling begins again
“The federation has surveyed the landscape of available managers and concluded that the answer lies in 2013. This is not boldness. This is a failure of imagination dressed up as pragmatism.”
Miguel Herrera is back. The Mexican Football Federation announced on 18th June that Herrera will take charge of the national team, with Ricardo Peláez joining him in what the federation describes as a loan arrangement from their club positions 12. This marks Herrera's second stint with El Tri, following his previous tenure from 2013 to 2015. For a federation that has spent the better part of a decade promising renewal, reaching again for a manager who last held the job eleven years ago is a curious definition of progress.
Herrera's first spell delivered results that flattered to deceive. He guided Mexico through the 2014 World Cup, where they reached the round of sixteen before losing to the Netherlands in a match remembered mostly for Arjen Robben's theatrics. His teams were organised, hard to break down, and capable of the occasional inspired performance. They were also predictable, tactically conservative, and reliant on individual brilliance rather than systemic coherence. When the federation sacked him in 2015—ostensibly for an altercation with a television commentator at Philadelphia Airport—it felt like an overdue recognition that passion alone does not constitute a philosophy.
Yet here we are. The federation has surveyed the landscape of available managers, weighed the options, and concluded that the answer lies in 2013. This is not boldness. This is a failure of imagination dressed up as pragmatism.
What the numbers reveal
The scale of the federation's stasis is visible in the data. Hindsite has indexed 396 articles on the Mexico national team across its entire history, yet only two have appeared in the last 24 hours and none in the preceding week [site statistics]. This is not the profile of a federation generating momentum or ideas. It is the profile of an institution becalmed, generating headlines only when it reaches backwards.
Herrera's appointment arrives at a moment when Mexican football faces structural questions it has spent years avoiding. The national team has failed to progress beyond the round of sixteen at a World Cup since 1986, a drought now spanning nearly four decades. The domestic league, while commercially successful, has become a closed shop that prioritises short-term profit over player development. Young Mexican talent increasingly finds that the pathway to European football—the traditional proving ground for the continent's best—runs not through Liga MX but around it. The federation's response to these challenges has been to appoint a manager whose career peak came when the iPhone 5 was the newest model.
The 'loan' arrangement with Peláez adds a layer of administrative absurdity 2. Both men remain contracted to their clubs while serving the national team, a compromise that suggests the federation either cannot afford to buy out their contracts or does not believe strongly enough in the appointment to commit fully. It is the institutional equivalent of hedging one's bets—an approach that might work in portfolio management but rarely in football, where commitment and clarity of purpose matter.
The case for continuity, such as it is
There is an argument, if you squint, for Herrera's return. He knows the federation's machinery, understands the Mexican football ecosystem, and has delivered results before. His teams do not collapse; they compete. In a football culture that has lately lurched between underperformance and crisis, competence has a certain appeal. And Herrera is nothing if not competent.
Moreover, the alternative landscape is not obviously richer. Mexico's recent managerial appointments have included Gerardo Martino, whose tenure ended in mutual disappointment, and a procession of caretakers and short-term fixes. The federation's scouting of international managers has historically been half-hearted, constrained by budget, language, and an institutional preference for the familiar. If the choice is between Herrera and another uninspired domestic appointment, Herrera at least brings a known quantity.
But this is the logic of managed decline. It accepts that Mexican football's horizons have shrunk, that the federation's ambitions now extend no further than avoiding embarrassment rather than pursuing excellence. It treats the national team not as a project with direction but as a problem to be contained.
What renewal would actually require
The federation's central failure is not tactical but imaginative. Mexican football does not lack talent; it lacks a coherent vision for how that talent should develop and where it should aim. Herrera's return will not address the closure of Liga MX to relegation, which has removed the competitive pressure that once drove clubs to invest in youth development. It will not solve the fact that Mexican players abroad remain a minority, limiting their exposure to the highest levels of European competition. It will not confront the federation's own governance issues, which have included corruption scandals and a revolving door of administrators more concerned with preserving their positions than building for the future.
Renewal would require the federation to make uncomfortable choices: to prioritise long-term player development over short-term commercial returns, to open the league structure to genuine competition, to appoint a manager with a clear philosophy and then give him time to implement it even when results falter. None of this is glamorous. All of it is necessary. And none of it is achieved by appointing Miguel Herrera in 2026.
The trajectory remains downward
Herrera will probably stabilise things. Mexico will qualify for tournaments, compete respectably, and occasionally exceed low expectations. The federation will point to these outcomes as vindication. But stability is not success, and competence is not a strategy. The appointment reveals a federation that has stopped asking what Mexican football could become and settled for managing what it is. That is a choice, and it is the wrong one.