Panama vs Mexico Prediction, Betting Tips & Preview

Preview

Joel Amorim Jul 21, 2015 @ 01:16 am

Next Thursday, 23rd of July 2015, Miguel Herrera’s Mexico will measure forces with a well organized Panama at Georgia Dome in Atlanta for the second match of the Gold Cup Semi-finals.

After their almost agonizing stint at Copa America, where Miguel Herrera used a great deal of backup players instead of his regular team, Mexico are now showing a fairly different image of themselves at the Gold Cup. El Tricolor’s free flowing attacking game is a delight to the eye but their finishing skills are, nevertheless, being far from impressive. In their last match against Costa Rica for the tournament’s Quarter-finals, Mexico had no more no less than 21 goal attempts but they only managed to score a single goal and it was from the penalty spot. 120 minutes of attacking football only provided them one goal at the dying moments of extra-time and that must be something that is worrying Miguel Herrera. The Mexican boss opted for Oribe Peralta and Carlos Vela’s duo up front once again but the dynamic pair failed to overcome an utterly inspired Costa Rican goalie Esteban Alvarado, who is, funny enough, looking for a club currently, after having left AZ Alkmaar this Summer.

Mexico need to improve and they cannot be complacent in their semi-finals’ match against Panama, otherwise they might not be as lucky as they were against Costa Rica, when they scored a goal at the dying moments of extra-time and avoided the always unpredictable penalty shootout.

As for Panama, Los Canaleros have been fairly discrete at the Gold Cup so far and the only match they’ve managed to win was against Trinidad & Tobago in the tournament’s quarter-finals and they needed to go to the penalty shootout in order to achieve a victory.

During the group stage, all of Panama’s matches ended in a 1-1 draw and the Panamanian team experienced several difficulties in every single one of them.

The last time Panama and Mexico went head-to-head was back in October and El Tricolor won by 1-0 thanks to a goal from the 22-year old Erick Torres and if Los Canaleros didn’t manage to improve their game they risk being defeated once again.

Panama

Stats: W-1 L-1 D-3

Recent Form - WDDDL

Mexico

Stats: W-2 L-0 D-3

Recent Form - WDDWD

Possible Line-ups

Panama (4-4-2) – Penedo - Cummings - Torres - Pimentel - Henriquez - Gomez - Cooper - Medina - Godoy - Tejada - Pérez

Mexico (5-3-2) - Ochoa - Aguilar - Rodriguez - Reyes - Y. Corona - Layún - J. dos Santos - Herrera - Guardado - Peralta - Vela

Injury List / Suspended Players

Panama - None

Mexico - Javier Hernandez (inj)

Head-to-head matches:

Top Players:

Panama - Tejada - Torres - Cooper

Mexico - Carlos Vela - Hector Herrera - Andres Guardado

League Positions