Two critical qualifying games will be played tomorrow in our region, as Mexico host bottom-of-the-table Trinidad and Tobago while Honduras host El Salvador.

Mexico have won only one game so far, and looked dismal in their 2-1 defeat away Saturday in San Salvador. Honduras, of course, is coming off a 2-1 loss at Chicago while T&T dropped a close game at home 2-3 to Costa Rica. Both Honduras and El Salvador are neck and neck for the third automatic slot, with only a point separating the teams.

Mexico first: New coach Javier Aguirre has a major rebuilding job on his hands. His team is too old, too slow and completely out of sorts after the failed Sven-Goran Eriksson coaching experiment.

The Tricolores have been humiliated of late, suffering bad losses to Jamaica, Honduras and Saturday's late giveaway to El Salvador via a handball on Gerardo Torrado with only six minutes on the clock. They haven't won a game on the road in almost a year, leaving Aguirre in the difficult position of making excuses after only one game in charge.

"The way the playing calendar was set up, we had four games - and three were away," Aguirre told reporters Saturday evening. "El Salvador is just the other way around. The calendar and the lack of victories leaves us hanging by a thread."

Uh, no: The reason Mexico is losing is because their most effective player is the 36-year-old Chicago midfielder Cuauhtemoc Blanco, whom Aguirre coaxed out of international retirement. Another key player, Rafa Marquez, is out due to injury, while the rest of the roster reads like a 1990's who's who: Guillermo Franco, Oscar Perez, Gerardo Torrado and P