Farewell Temoc

Blanco after last night’s game/Getty Images

A num­ber of post­ings on this site have been spent crit­i­ciz­ing both MLS and Cuauhte­moc Blanco him­self. How­ever, last night I felt hon­ored as I wit­nessed live both Blanco’s 100th cap and his final appear­ance for Mex­ico in a 2–1 vic­tory over Canada in Chi­a­pas. Blanco has been a col­or­ful and some­what unsport­ing play­ers at times in his career. But his qual­ity has been unmis­tak­able for El Tri and for Amer­ica where he spent the bet­ter part of his club career. Blanco kept him­self in shape and moti­vated to get to 100 caps despite the reluc­tance of both Ricardo Lavolpe and Hugo Sanchez to fea­ture him prominently.

Blanco’s final crown­ing achiev­ment for Mex­ico was help­ing El Tri under a new man­ager, Sven Goran Eriks­son sweep its home matches in World Cup qual­i­fy­ing group play thus vir­tu­ally ensur­ing pas­sage to the final round of qual­i­fy­ing. Those of us in the United States are for­tu­nate enough to watch this liv­ing leg­end con­tinue ply­ing his trade here in MLS. For the rest of you, he will be sorely missed no doubt.