MEXICO
Andrés Guardado asked for Chicharito to return the Mexico National Team: Tata Martino said no
The midfielder said he asked Tata Martino to bring Javier ‘Chicharito’ Hernández back to El Tri, but he declined.
Mexican midfielder Andrés Guardado, during an interview with David Faitelson, opened up on plenty of what happened when he was a key player in the Mexican National Team.
During the chat, the former Real Betis midfielder revealed something that had been rumoured for some time: he asked the coach, Gerardo Martino, to bring back Javier ‘Chicharito’ Hernández to the squad. However, the idea was rejected by the current manager of Inter Miami.
Mexico squad not accepting Chicharito ‘an outside issue’
“There came a time when we didn’t have any strikers for the 2021 Gold Cup, and there was a rumour that Chicharito was not being called up because, supposedly, the group did not want him.
I went to talk to Tata and I told him, ‘Tata, I want to tell you that if you do not want to call up Javier [Hernández] because you think the group will not accept him, forget it, that is an outside issue.
“We are delighted, we want to win, we want to have the best team”, Guardado continued, “he made his decision, he said it had nothing to do with that, that it was something else he had with him.
“Internally between him and Tata I don’t know [if there were any problems], I have no idea. What I can tell you is that it was said that there were supposedly two groups, and that the group made up of Ochoa, Guardado, Herrera, Moreno didn’t want him... that’s a total lie”, clarified the former captain of the National Team.
The current Club León player argued that within the team there was a good feeling of unity among all the players. However, he also emphasised that he understood the preference that existed for some more than others when the time came to get to work.
“Someone misunderstood because obviously everyone gets along better with some people than others, but it doesn’t mean that afterwards we have to go to lunch together and be best friends off the pitch.
On the pitch we always worked well together; I shared more with Ochoa, but when it came to work we all got along very well, we never had a problem. At least with him, personally, there was never a problem,” concluded Guardado.