Mexico Mexico has a new coach but is facing the same old pressure to excel as it prepares for its two-game World Cup qualifying series with Belize.
The Unsound contest, named for the local surf shop that is its principal sponsor, is part of a world qualifying series that ranks professional surfers.
They could not even draft in their U-20 squad for this week's Oceania World Cup qualifying series as they were involved in end-of-term exams.
That will change soon when Arena opens camp for his European-based players on May 26 in advance of a friendly on June 2, then a home-and-away World Cup qualifying series against Grenada.
Even though there's no Brazil, who qualify automatically as hosts, leaving a nine-team group from which four sides qualify automatically and one goes into a play-off, this is likely to be the toughest Conmebol qualifying series there has ever been.
Atanas Fournadjiev, the BFU's deputy president, admitted to Dnevnik, the national daily newspaper, at the end of the World Cup qualifying series that if they'd had more money they'd have turned to a high-profile foreigner (this, remember, is a country in which Terry Venables is still linked to the national side on a regular basis).
Instead, the Op experimented with a team format for a year before joining the world qualifying series last year.
We were playing in a Champions League qualifying series against a team from Slovenia.
The proof has been underscored time and again during the nearly four-month-long qualifying series.
Brazil lost, 1-0, to Uruguay on July 1 in the South American World Cup qualifying series.
before facing Barbados in a home-and-home World Cup qualifying series that will be played later in June.
