Football
Tom Marshall, Mexico correspondent 6y

Mexico's Juan Carlos Osorio regrets playing four-man back line in loss to Sweden

EKATERINBURG, Russia -- Mexico coach Juan Carlos Osorio regretted his tactics and was left "very hurt" by his team's 3-0 World Cup loss to Sweden on Wednesday, despite El Tri advancing to the round of 16.

Osorio lamented his decision to not play with Mexico's accustomed formation of three center-backs to counter Sweden's direct style, but stressed that Mexico is through to the knockout rounds on its own merits.

"We qualified because we beat Germany and South Korea," said Osorio in his postgame news conference. "However and nevertheless, I am very hurt.

"For the first time in many, many games when we play against a team that play that idea of football, of direct football, we usually play with three at the back and an anchor man who is very good in the air. Basically we defend with four.

"Today for the first time we decided to play with [a back line of] four and not that structure. And at the end, we didn't succeed in our penetration in the final third."

Osorio also suggested he wasn't happy with the way his team defended against Sweden's aerial play.

"This is a style of play that all of Latin America struggles to understand and defend against, except Uruguay," Osorio told Telemundo. "We must continue to prepare ourselves for this kind of scenario when we have to play against very tactical teams with a direct style of play and two forwards.

"In the past we played with three defenders and one midfielder in the center. Today we used a 4-3-3 formation like we've been doing at the World Cup and it didn't work in the end."

Mexico finished in second position in Group F and will play their round-of-16 tie against Brazil on Monday in Samara, and the Colombian coach said the squad must regroup as El Tri seeks to reach the quarterfinal stage of the World Cup for the first time since 1986.

"It would have been horrible to get all the way to this match with six points and not have qualified," Osorio said in his conference. "We will sit down and over today's match again. But there is not much time to sit and cry over what happened. Now it is time to consider the next rival we face."

Most fans were relieved to go through, but Mexico captain Rafa Marquez hit out at critics who took issue with the way Mexico advanced, after they won their first two games over Germany and South Korea.

"Mediocre people who have never accomplished anything in their lives would say that we advanced due to a miracle," Marquez wrote on Instagram. "Those of us who have done something important in our lives would say that our first objective was met and now we are going to work, to continue to improve to reach our next goal, proposal or objective!"

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