México met Chile on Tuesday, October 6, at the Coliseo de Los Ángeles with Rafael Márquez still chasing his first win as coach of the Tri. The match arrived after México opened the October FIFA window without a victory, and it gave Márquez one last chance to change that before the month was gone.
The setting mattered because the result against Estados Unidos had already deepened the pressure. México drew 1-1 with Colombia and 1-1 with Perú, then lost 3-0 on Saturday, a score line that sat uneasily beside the team’s own sense that it had played well until the first goal. Márquez said he was focused on the work of the group and on drawing the positives from that stretch, while also making clear that his continuity with the Tri through the Mundial 2030 was outside his control.
Chile came into a Mexico Vs Chile date that was being watched closely in Los Ángeles, where organizers had reported 50,000 tickets sold by the weekend. The match also carried a broader market test for a team that has leaned on the city before, and it was shown on Univision, TUDN, and Vix for viewers who were following the last fixture of the window.
But the roster left little room for comfort. Gilberto Mora left the concentration after physical discomfort and was sent back to Tijuana for a new evaluation, while Hirving Lozano, Julián Quiñones and Raúl Jiménez were all unavailable through injury. Mateo Chávez was also out after being sent off against Estados Unidos and had to serve a one-match ban before returning to AZ Alkmaar. That list forced Márquez to reshape the team around the available players rather than the names he would have preferred.
Márquez had already tried to frame the problem in practical terms, saying the staff was focused on the team’s work and that there was trust in the players who had to step in. He also said Mora had come with the group so the staff could see how to help him improve, but that the discomfort had lingered for weeks and needed to be handled carefully. For México, the question after Chile was not just whether the score line changed, but whether this October FIFA window could end with any sign that the reset was starting to hold.
