Raúl Jiménez’s injury at Wolves, which has led to him missing this international break, has led to calls for him to be left out by Mexico entirely.
The 35-year-old is sitting out this international break after suffering a knee injury in Wolves’ loss to Everton in the Carabao Cup.
It means he will miss out on adding to his 130 international appearances for Mexico, for whom he has also scored 48 goals.
Opportunity knocks
They will instead have to look at other options and now Marca make the case that it ‘could open a window of opportunity’ for Mexico’s other strikers. They are Santiago Giménez and Armando González.
Both were called up by Rafael Márquez as they take part in various friendlies in this break. They have already drawn with both Colombia and Peru and then take on USA on Sunday.
Neither made a compelling case in those games to replace the Wolves striker should he return in the coming month. Mexico have CONCACAF Nations League games in November. Jiménez is expected to return at the end of October.
But the calls are growing for change while he’s not in the squad. Marca report that on the FOX One programme Cuadro Titular, sports analyst Fernando Cevallos suggested that the Wolves man should be left out entirely moving forwards.
2030 World Cup unlikely
He argued that Jiménez is unlikely to play in the 2030 World Cup. He will be 39 at that tournament.
Instead he proposed using Jiménez’s injury as an opportunity to give more playing time to young centre-forwards. There’s Giménez and González and Inter Miami’s Germán Berterame.
Rafael Márquez Lugo was also on that show. He also urged Mexico’s other options to ‘capitalise on Raúl Jiménez’s absence to wrest the starting spot away from him.’ So, there’s two who are being very vocal about what they’d like to see.
They want the rest of the squad to take advantage of the Wolves’ star’s absence to determine what the future looks like for their nation. Whether they can remains to be seen.
