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A win in this game puts Mexico through to the 2019 U-20 World Cup and will knock El Salvador out of the 2018 CONCACAF Men’s U-20 Championship.
El Tri had a moment of vulnerability in the Group Stage, played to a 2-2 draw by Jamaica, but outscored its last two opponents in Group B by an aggregate score of 18-0 to reassert its status as a dominant team at this level in CONCACAF.
Armed with the tournament’s top-scorer, Jose Macias, and one of the most highly-rated teenage prospects in the region - Diego Lainez - Mexico will feel confident in its ability to conjure the goals necessary to subdue El Salvador. Not least because it took an extraordinary performance by Salvadoran ‘keeper Rodrigo Artiga merely to limit his team’s loss to Panama to 1-0 in the opening game of Group H of the Qualification Stage.
El Salvador appears to have neither the firepower (seven goals scored in five games at this championship), nor the defensive solidity (six goals conceded in those five games) to challenge Mexico (four wins and a draw with a +29 goal difference coming out of the Group Stage).
Consider it a significant upset if this game finishes as anything other than a win for Mexico.