Victor Manuel Vucetich used his pre-match briefing to register surprise that he will confront Rafael Benítez rather than Roberto Di Matteo at the Yokohama International stadium on Thursday night. The Mexican later broke away from listing Chelsea players' heights to admit, with brutal honesty, that the Premier League club "will be scoring goals" against his Monterrey side as he considered the Fifa Club World Cup semi-final ahead.
Yet even a coach of his considerable experience, a veteran of five league championships at four different clubs over a 22-year coaching career, could not conceal his excitement at what might be achieved by Los Rayados this week. "We remember Necaxa drawing with Manchester United in Rio in this competition back in 2000, but winning this game would represent the most important result ever in Mexican club football," he said. "We want to make history and, while I know our opponents very well, we believe in our own strengths. We can win this game."
The side barring Chelsea's passage into Sunday's showpiece final are convinced this tournament may not end with the presumed meeting of South American and European champions. That would buck a trend, particularly as Monterrey did not arrive in Japan with much recent form behind them having finished seventh in the Apertura back in Mexico. They have since been shaken, even in their distant base at Nagoya, by the earthquake that struck off the east coast of Japan over the weekend, and then lost their best player, Humberto Suazo, to a torn thigh muscle.
Yet this team have claimed successive Concacaf Champions League titles and have already bettered their performance from last year in this tournament. Back then they had arrived wide-eyed and under-prepared and duly succumbed to the J-League side Kashiwa Reysol in the quarter-final. This time around they played a friendly against Colombian opposition en route and, after 11 days in Japan, will be acclimatised and ready for the challenge that awaits. They learned lessons from that failure.
The confidence stems from Vucetich himself. The 57-year-old has enjoyed a nomadic career, taking in 13 different jobs over his career, but has flourished with this group. Monterrey are tidy in possession and boast an exciting, goalscoring midfielder in César Delgado – as Ulsan Hyundai discovered to their cost on Sunday – and a skilful, fleet-footed attacker in the teenager Jesús Corona, who has effectively replaced Suazo. Dárvin Chávez and Hiram Mier were members of the Mexico side who won gold at the Olympics in London, beating Brazil in the final. "We have talented players in our team," said the manager. "What we'll do is play the way we need to play: we'll have a gameplan. We'll pay Chelsea respect, but we want to display our own qualities.
"Chelsea are a strong team, physically tough, and very skilful. They may not have forwards who are tall, but Juan Mata, Eden Hazard and Victor Moses are all very fast, and Fernando Torres is a very intelligent player. I'm not saying they're a small team – they have players like Gary Cahill, David Luiz, Ramires who are all over 180cm. Torres is 182cm, I think, and the right-back [Branislav Ivanovic] is 186cm. But their threat is in their fast, quicker players. They are a very good team, one of the best in the world, but we are well prepared. This is going to be a new page in the history of our club team."
That, at present, is a rather brief history with Monterrey, founded in 1945, having enjoyed their most prolonged period of success in the past decade, with three Mexican titles claimed in that time. They are backed by FEMSA, Latin America's largest bottling company whose clients include Coca-Cola, but find themselves a significant part of a wave of progress in Mexican football. The Olympics success was part of that. "But Mexico is growing and doing better," added Vucetich. "In international tournaments, from our club teams to the national under-17s, and in Concacaf we are growing. This tournament, for us, is a good opportunity to demonstrate that." Chelsea must beware falling victims of the resurgence.
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