Mexico breaks the 40-year curse by defeating Ecuador in the World Cup knockout rounds
Mexico beat Ecuador 2-0 in the World Cup knockout rounds, breaking a 40-year winless streak in knockout matches, with goals from Julian Quinones and Raúl Jiménez.
The Mexican national team was able to achieve an important victory over its Ecuadorian counterpart with a score of 2-0 in the match that was held on Tuesday evening, breaking a curse that lasted 40 years without a victory in the qualifying rounds. Julian Quinones opened the scoring in the 22nd minute, and Raul Jimenez added the second goal in the 31st minute.
The win is Mexico's first in the knockout rounds since 1986, when they defeated Bulgaria in the round of 16. Since then, Mexico has lost seven consecutive matches at the same stage of the World Cup between 1994 and 2018. In the 2022 Qatar World Cup, it was eliminated from the group stage for the first time since 1978.
Quinones scored his third goal of the tournament, making him now Mexico's second-highest World Cup goalscorer, behind Luis "Matador" Hernandez and Javier "Chicharito" Hernandez, who scored four goals each. While Jimenez scored his second goal in the tournament, bringing him to 47 goals with the national team, surpassing Jared Borgetti.
Mexico will next face the winner of the England-Congo match, which will be played on Sunday at the famous Estadio Azteca, where Mexico has an unbeaten record in ten World Cup matches.
The match was played an hour after its original scheduled time due to a thunderstorm, the second match in the tournament to be affected by the weather. In the previous match between France and Iraq, play was suspended for two hours and 11 minutes.