Fidalgo caps Mexico rout as co-hosts maintain 100% record and send Czechia out

There are ways of leaving a tournament. You can go out with a sheen of glory, having gone to-to-toe with a great opponent. You can be unlucky and go home raging at referees and the fates. You can self-immolate in a blaze of red cards or own goals or spectacular errors. Or you can slink away without leaving a trace – and that was the path followed by Czechia. Nobody in 20 years will remember they were involved in this World Cup , other perhaps than Republic of Ireland fans reflecting on what a mess the Czechs made of the place they pinched from them in the playoff. A win would probably have taken Czechia though but that never looked likely. Czechia coach, Miroslav Koubek, left out two of his most experienced campaigners in Patrik Schick and Tomas Soucek, and the way was left clear for a 17-year-old to control the game. Soucek did come on, but then landed awkwardly and left the field in obvious distress. There had been calls for Gilberto Mora to start both Mexico’s first two games of the tournament, and it was easy to see why. He had impressed even before playing a part in the first two Mexico goals. Mora, the youngest player to start a World Cup match since Nigeria’s Femi Opabunmi in 2002, and the sixth youngest of all time, looks impossibly small, even for somebody only 17 years, seven months and 28 days old. When he was born in October 2008, the collapse of Lehman Brothers was already a month in the past. …