KAZAN, Russia. – Mexico are no strangers to the Festival of Champions, having appeared at six of the competition’s nine editions to date, a distinction they share with Brazil. Los Aztecas made their Confederations Cup debut at Saudi Arabia 1995, finishing in an eminently respectable third place courtesy of a penalty shootout defeat of Nigeria. Their greatest achievement came in hosting the competition four years later, when a side led by the indefatigable Cuauhtémoc Blanco beat a Brazil team containing the fast-emerging Ronaldinho 4-3 in the final at the Estadio Azteca. The Mexicans went on to claim fourth at Germany 2005, where they suffered an extra-time defeat to the hosts in the match for third place, while their Brazil 2013 campaign came to a premature end in the group phase.
Knocked out in the semi-finals of the 2013 CONCACAF Gold Cup, a tournament won by their arch rivals USA, Mexico went into the 2015 continental finals determined to regain the title and with it a place in the Russia 2017 play-off against the Stars and Stripes; staged in California on 10 October, when Paul Aguilar’s extra-time goal gave the men in green a 3-2 win and the right to represent the CONCACAF Zone in Russia.
Though they have never previously taken part in the Confederations Cup, Russia are regular participants at the World Cup and UEFA EURO. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian national team have taken part in three World Cups – in 1994, 2002 and 2014 – though they failed to make it past the group stage on each occasion. Qualifying automatically as competition hosts, Russia were the first confirmed participants for the Confederations Cup 2017.
Saturday, June 24th of 2017: Mexico vs. Russia at 11:00AM ET/10:00 AM CT/08:00AM PT, live and exclusively on Telemundo and Telemundo Deportes En Vivo App.
Possible Lineups:
Mexico: Guillermo Ochoa, Miguel Layún, Hector Moreno, Néstor Araujo, Carlos Salcedo, Orbelín Pineda, Héctor Herrera, Andrés Guardado, Giovani dos Santos, Javier Hernández y Oribe Peralta.
Russia: Igor Akinfeev, Denis Glushakov, Sergei Ignashevich, Vasili Berezutski, Igor Smolnikov, Aleksandr Golovin, Aleksandr Kokorin, Oleg Shatov, Roman Shirokov, Igor Denisov y Artem Dzyuba.
