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 that 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 through but that never looked likely. The 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 Nigerian 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. Mora is only 5ft 6in, and slight with it; Norman Whiteside, who remains the youngest player in World Cup history, would have towered over him despite being six-and-a-half months younger when he set the record in Spain in 1982.
What marks Mora out is his touch. One turn, just after the first-half hydration break, taking the ball with the outside of his right foot and spinning away from traffic, had an air of Lionel Messi about it, not just in terms of the technique, but the scurrying gait. It was his pass to Luis Romo six minutes into the second half that carved the Czech defence open for the first time, but the midfielder who got the winner against South Korea rather rushed his cross and the chance was lost.