FC Juarez Finds New Ways to Lose Against Xolos de Tijuana
Bravos de FC Juarez suffered their most recent defeat Sunday night, losing to Xolos de Tijuana in Baja California by the score of 1-0. FC Juarez squandered away a golden opportunity to break their seven match winless streak playing with a man from the 36th minute. Still that kind of advantage was not enough for the Bravos to find a way to put the ball in the back of the net.
It is extremely difficult to find any silver lining for Juarez in this match. Did their function and execution improve compared to their last half dozen games? Yes. Still, at the end of the day there was no reward to that improvement, quite the opposite actually they lost once again.
With this result the Bravos in next to last place in the general standings table out of 18 teams with 8 points in 11 matches and in dead last place in the points per average table which dictates what teams will pay a multi-million dollar fine at the end of the season for those three clubs that occupy the last three positions.
Speaking of the fine, the Bravos are not too far from guaranteeing themselves that they will not be able to accumulate enough points to improve from those dreaded final three spots in the that table, thereby guaranteed to be forced to pay a fine come the month of May.
FC Juarez is truly a club that is in turmoil everywhere you look. There is uncertainty everywhere with the first team. What is the status of head coach Ricardo 'Tuca' Ferretti? Will he stay or will he go? If he goes, when???
Then there are their injured players. Goal scorers Dario Lezcano and Diego Rolan have been injured for a majority pretty much all season, Lezcano since early last year. Anderson Leite, a defender that joined the team this season, was injured weeks ago and hasn’t been heard from either.
The front office provides no status, no updates or time frame for possible return.
To make matters worse the Bravos female team in the Liga MX women’s league is in last place in the general standing table as are the Under-20 and Under-18 teams.
With these kinds of performances there is little wonder as to why this club has become in many ways the laughing stock of the national media in Mexico and the United States. Some on-air personalities on match broadcasts struggle to speak about FC Juarez in a positive light, most have no issues taking direct shots at them over the course of the two-hour broadcasts.
The club and its owners assure that this is a long-term building process that will be successful at the end of the day, but at what price? And I mean that both monetarily and from a PR standpoint.