Mexico lose but go through

Group D Portugal 2 Mexico 1: If there were prizes for headgear at these things, their supporters would ensure the Mexicans took gold every time.

On the field, though, they are top-10 material at best, always in the knockout stages in recent times but never for very long. The hatful of chances they missed against a weakened Portugal yesterday suggested this year will be no different.

Around the main train station, many fans who had travelled a long way were making a few English touts very happy. You would have more time for those who resell tickets at hugely inflated prices if they provided some class of after-sales service. A satisfaction guarantee would, for instance, be nice. But yesterday it would have cost them their takings because try as they might the Mexicans simply couldn't engineer a result against a side that looked happy to sit on a narrow lead through the second half.

"For me, it's very frustrating," observed the Mexican coach, Ricardo La Volpe, "because we have the forwards, we get forward as far as the other team's goalkeeper very well, but we don't put away our chances. I look at this game and feel we moved the ball around better than them but we haven't scored the goals and for a coach that's a very hard thing to address."

To judge by his demeanour, Portugal coach Luiz Felipe Scolari was delighted by a win that extends his own run at World Cup finals to 10 on the trot, a record.

"Both teams were very good, though," he insisted, "and I wouldn't be at all surprised if they each progress beyond the next round."

Given the quality of the opposition they will face at the weekend that would amount to an unlikely double, though one presumes Scolari's men at least possess a higher gear than the one they used for much of this game.

For a while the match had actually threatened to be a classic. With the roof closed and the sky overcast, conditions were as well suited to as fast a game as we have seen over the past couple of weeks, and both sides seemed inclined to avail of the opportunity.

As they did in their opening match, the Portuguese came out of the traps at full pelt before easing off a little.

And just as happened against Angola, the spell of pressure ended with Scolari's side a goal to the good, Maniche finishing, with a 10-yard drive past Oswaldo Sanchez, a move the Portuguese midfielder had started.

Some 18 minutes later the lead was doubled when the Mexican captain, Rafael Marquez, conceded as pointless a penalty as you're likely to see. The 27-year-old simply stuck up an arm as the ball went past, and Simao Sabrosa gratefully accepted the gift, firing home from the spot.

Portugal were flying and, briefly, a rout looked likely. Inevitably, though, the Portuguese lost their way, and the Mexicans capitalised on the half-hour when Jose Fonseca turned Pavel Pardo's corner goalwards.

A defender on the far post would surely have kept the ball out but to Ricardo's apparent surprise there were only Mexicans gathered there.

Until then Portugal had looked to have far more ideas than their opponents, who struggled to cope with the movement of players like Tiago, Simao and, for a while, Luis Figo.

The veteran superstar personified his side's decline in the second half, however, the 33-year-old clearly running out of steam as the Mexicans continued to up the tempo.

For the 15 minutes that preceded his replacement, the midfielder retained the poise of a proven great but little else.

All around team-mates were becoming similarly peripheral as La Volpe's side threw themselves into the contest, spurred on no doubt by the news from Leipzig that Angola, their rivals for the group's second place in round two, were beating Iran.

Mexico's superiority from that point on was undeniable, and had their finishing been better they might have won by a couple of goals.

But in fact their finishing was awful, never more so than when Omar Bravo blasted his penalty kick over the bar after Miguel had been punished for either a handball or a wild challenge on Luis Perez - the referee was free to take his pick, for the right back was guilty on both counts.

Committing two fouls at once inside your own box is, of course, an unpromising way to defend a lead but then it was that sort of game. By the end, some 47 fouls had been punished by the referee (while a good many more went unnoticed) and eight players had been booked, Perez dismissed in the 61st minute when he had his name taken for the second time.

For play to flow in the context of such frequent interruptions would have been a miracle, yet the game remained eventful and generally exciting, Mexico deserving credit for the persistence with which they dominated despite being outnumbered.