UPDATED: Miguel Herrera Fired (Developing)
2: 21 pm UPDATE: Ahead of the scheduled 3 pm press conference, ESPN Deportes’ John Sutcliffe has confirmed that Herrera has been fired.
Miguel Herrera, famous for his demonstrative style on the sideline during matches, is awaiting the decision of the Mexican Football Federation (FMF) over his fate. Despite winning the recently-concluded CONCACAF Gold Cup, securing Mexico a chance to qualify for the 2017 Confederations Cup, a dark cloud was cast over the win for Mexico when Herrera was accused of punching a reporter from TV Azteca at the Philadelphia airport.
The airport incident has also been exacerbated somewhat by tweets made by the dos Santos brothers Gio and Jonathan that seemed to confirm that some sort of confrontation did occur. Those tweets have since been deleted, but screenshots can be easily found.
The FMF convened a meeting on Tuesday morning to decide on the future of Herrera, and it is widely expected that he will be dismissed, per a violation of the FMF Ethics Code:
“Any person that holds a position or fulfills an activity directly or indirectly related to FMF and federated football, adheres to the principles and obligations within the current Code of Ethics, therefore, cannot argue lack of knowledge or non-existence of judicial interest as a defense adopting beginning or commencement of activities, with dignified conduct, authentic and integral that will avoid infringing on the principles within this Code.”
Assuming the position in November of 2013 when the Mexican national team was in a state of disarray following a managerial merry-go-round of 3 managers in the month before Herrera’s hiring, El Piojo (“The Louse”), as he is popularly known, righted the ship for Mexico and guided them to victory in a World Cup qualification playoff against New Zealand.
In Brazil, Mexico did well to advance from a fairly difficult group that included the host nation, and ultimately lost in the round of 16 following a controversial penalty call against the Netherlands. It was during the World Cup that Herrera gained fame for his sideline behavior, ranging from leaps of joy in celebration of goals to wild gesticulating with his whole body to give instructions to his team.
(developing story…….)
12:00 pm UPDATE: From the futbaltotal editor-in-chief, on-site at the FMF headquarters.
1:oo pm UPDATE: The FMF will be holding a press conference at 2:00 pm.
1:55 pm UPDATE: That’s a 3:00 pm eastern time presser at FMF. Asked what the sense is among reporters on-site, futboltotal’s Eric Gomez stated the following:
2:08 pm UPDATE: ESPN Mexico’s John Sutcliffe has tweeted confirmation that Miguel Herrera is no longer the manager.
3:08 pm UPDATE: The FMF press conference has begun, and General Secretary Decio de Maria has announced the Herrera has been fired.
Speculation will now turn to the question of whom the FMF will approach for the job. As yet, no interim manager has been named, and with de Maria stating that there has been no decision made yet about whether to approach a Mexican coach or a foreign coach, there are plenty of question marks about the next steps for this team. Pedro Caixinha, Ricardo Feretti, former manager Victor Vucetich, and even Marcelo Bielsa and Jorge Sampaoli are some the names being bandied around by observers. There is little time to waste, as the playoff against the United States comes up in just over 10 weeks.