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Miguel Herrera has decided to call Javier Aquino into Mexico's World Cup team to replace Luis Montes, who was injured in El Tri's friendly against Ecuador on Saturday. If Instagram is any indication, Aquino is in Hong Kong so it may be a day or two before he can join up with the team.
Montes was expected to start for Mexico and had been one of the team's best players of late. He even scored a remarkable goal to put Mexico up 1-0 against Ecuador, but moments later he got caught in an awful tackle and broke two bones in his leg.
It didn't take long for Herrera to decide who would replace Montes. He told reporters at halftime that Aquino would get the call.
Aquino is not near a like-for-like replacement for Montes. While Montes is an outright central midfielder, Aquino is a winger. The decision to call up Aquino is interesting because Herrera called up Miguel Ponce when Juan Carlos Medina was injured, another wide player for a central player, so now Mexico are down two central players from the roster makeup they expected.
Then again, few central players have made much of a case to be on the roster. Even a player like Jesus Zavala, who was a starter for Mexico just a year ago, has been awful lately and put in a horror performance against the United States in April so Herrera isn't exactly flush with central options to replace Medina and now Montes.