On the way to Tokyo 2020, Jaime Lozano should not cut players, however, in past processes, up to six players have lost
Coach Jaime Lozano will not have to cut players from the final list of the Mexican National Team U23 heading to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, as The International Olympic Committee authorized each participating team to bring up to 22 players to the Olympic tournament that will begin on July 23, although only 18 will be registered per game and four in the stands.
‘Jimmy’ Lozano already had in mind the players who were not going to continue for the summer tournament: Sebastian Jurado, Fernando Beltran Y Jesus Angle, according to sources close to ESPNHowever, this Olympic process has been atypical due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but in the two previous events, at least five elements were left out at the last minute after taking a good part of the Olympic process.
In the Rio 2016 joust, the same one that led Raúl Gutiérrez on the bench and who asked Alfredo Talavera, Oribe Peralta and Jorge Torres Nilo as reinforcements, there were more than five players who did not get a ticket to the tournament.
One of the main athletes who was left out of the call was Raúl Gudiño, a player that the ‘Potro’ knew well due to the process he had done since youth teams.
Similarly, players like Javier Abella and Antonio Briseño were left out. Briseño’s absence stood out because he was the captain of ‘Potro’ in the U-17 championship that Mexico achieved in 2011. The defender has even said that it was one of the hardest moments of his career.
Even, Raúl López, Orbelín Pineda, Omar Govea, Carlos Fierro and Ángel Zaldívar were sacrificed at the last minute, as they no longer appeared in the final list of 18 players that the helmsman presented to the organization.
For the London 2012 games, Alfredo Tena led a top-level team, which responded by winning the gold medal. In spite of everything, in the end he let players like Jonathan dos Santos go, as the youngest of the brothers asked to do the preseason with Barcelona to earn a place in the team, a request that they agreed to from the Tricolor.
Similarly, Liborio Sánchez was left out of the call, since the ‘Flaco’ Tena occupied José de Jesús Corona as one of his reinforcements in the senior team.
What’s more, Alan Pulido was left out with the call of Oribe Peralta as reinforcement. He even acknowledged years later that he was left with the thorn of going to the fair because he was one of the players who did the whole process and, even, he was from the Esperanzas tournament in Toulón, today Maurice Revello. Finally, Cándido Ramírez, Néstor Calderón and Hugo Isaac Rodríguez were other of those sacrificed.