The Football Ferns suffered a narrow 1–0 loss to hosts Mexico in Mexico City yesterday in the opening game of their three-match October Fifa window.
Head coach Michael Mayne named a strong side to take on the world No 29, with eight of the players who started in the team’s last match, the 2–1 win over Venezuela, retained.
Mexico, unbeaten since February, started strongly and found the breakthrough inside the opening 10 minutes.
The Ferns struggled to clear a corner and the ball fell to Aaliyah Farmer, who finished from close range.
New Zealand looked to fight back, and were competitive throughout, but it was not until the second half that they were able to carve out any really clear-cut opportunities.
With 63 minutes on the clock, Kelli Brown received the ball on the edge of the box, turned and shot from long range, but her effort was tipped around the post by Esthefanny Barreras in the Mexican goal.
Fifteen minutes later it was Indiah-Paige Riley testing Barreras, but her long-range strike was well held.
Mexico ended the game the stronger of the two sides, creating multiple chances to double their lead, including hitting the crossbar at the death through Lizbeth Ovalle, the world’s most expensive women’s footballer.
Speaking after the game, head coach Mayne said the Ferns would learn from the match.
"That’s easily the best team we’ve played this year. That was always the goal — we wanted to come over here and test ourselves. These are the kinds of teams we have to beat if we want to go through to the knockout stages [of the Fifa Women’s World Cup], so it was a good test, but in general it wasn’t us at our best."
The two teams meet again on Monday.
NZ v Mexico
The scores
Football Ferns 0
Mexico 1
Aaliyah Farmer 10’
— Allied Media
