Carlos Salcido announces departure from Chivas, blames coaching staff

Carlos Salcido, historic Chivas and Mexico National team defender, announced his departure from Chivas. While the departure was expected and everybody knew his performance in the Club World Cup was going to be his last appearance with the club, his farewell press conference revealed a few surprises. The biggest take was blaming coach Jose “Saturnino” Cardozo and his staff for pushing him out and forcing him to leave. Salcido said that he was leaving because of fighting with Cardozo, and that the staff didn’t tell him that he was no longer in plans but subtlety pushed him out. He even went out of his way to point out that he had received calls about Cardozo and his supposed mistreatment of another club legend from a club, Antonio Naelson Sinha, when Cardozo coached him in Toluca.

Carlos Salcido is no question a legend with Chivas. He came through in that great Chivas team from the early 2000’s that got to two Libertadores Semifinals, although he left for Europe and PSV Eindhoven prior to Chivas winning a league title for the first time since 1997. Still, Salcido shined in Europe with PSV and Fulham and with the Mexico National Team in the process, where he participated in two World Cups (2006 and 2010) during his time away from Liga MX.

Salcido eventually came back to Mexico with Tigres and he continued with the National team, despite suffering a sharp decline after the 2011 Gold Cup and the 2012 Olympic games where he won a Gold Medal as an overage player. Salcido would win his first Liga MX title with Tigres, and albeit being one of Mexico’s worst players during the infamous latter stage of Manuel de la Torre’s national team tenure, he still made the World Cup team for El Tri under Miguel Herrera in 2014.

Salcido returned to Chivas and was part of the Matias Almeyda led team that won the Double (Liga MX title and Copa MX) and the CONCACAF title a year later. Chivas has been under constant turmoil since, which culminated with Almeyda departure and Jose Cardozo’s arrival.

Salcido’s exit will seem to cause more ripples in the Chivas front office. While Salcido’s level had diminished to the point that Chivas fans, who had mostly been in denial mode when his decline started, were in agreeance of him getting benched, the way he was treated according to his press conference is going to cause hostility toward Cardozo and the front office, especially enemy number one, Jose Luis Higuera. Fans who were already displeased with Chivas’s awful performance in the Club World Cup, as well as rival America winning the league and becoming the club with the most titles. Cardozo will probably have more hostility but it won’t be close to the one Higuera faces, as he’s continuously blamed for Almeyda’s departure. It’s not clear what Salcido’s next move is, even if the possibility of a reunion with Almeyda, who is now coaching San Jose Earthquakes, is in play.