So, you see the title. Mexico 2010 World Cup squad. Sounds simple, right? Just look it up. That’s what I thought too. But when you get into actually documenting these things, getting the definitive, locked-in 23-man list, the whole thing turns into a mess, a proper pain in the ass, and you suddenly realize why a lot of sites just punt on the details.
The Initial Hunt: How Simple Data Gets Complicated
I needed this list. Not for a paper, not for a job. Just for a personal project, a roster I was building for an old video game mod. I needed the exact guy, the exact number, and the exact club he was playing for at that moment in June 2010. You start easy, right?
I fired up the search engine and typed the obvious query. What comes back is a tsunami of articles. Some fan blogs, some reputable sports sites, and a bunch of archived news feeds. The core names are easy. You get your Rafa Márquez, your Guardado, your Chicharito. No brainer.
Then the trouble started. The first list I snagged had 24 names. Turns out, that was the preliminary group before the final cut. The second list had the right 23, but the numbers were all over the place. One site said Kikín Fonseca was number 9, but wait, he wasn’t even in the final squad! That was the 2006 list getting tangled up. It’s a data nightmare of lazy copy-paste jobs.
I had to abandon the quick search strategy. That garbage was just cycling the same bad data. I started digging for sources that had archived the actual official team sheets from the games played in South Africa. I spent a good hour just trying to filter out all the pre-tournament friendly matches—the ones where they were still testing players—because those rosters are totally misleading.
I crawled through old news archives, looking for the date the final squad was announced. That turned up a press conference transcript, which was better, but even that was slightly ambiguous on the specific jersey numbers for the last few guys, the substitutes who never saw the pitch. The numbers matter for my mod, though. They had to be right.
Finally, I cross-referenced three different major reputable sources, triangulating the data. It was the only way to be 100% sure I wasn’t including someone who was cut at the last minute, like that whole Jonathan dos Santos situation (he made the pre-squad, got cut before the final 23). This simple, twenty-minute task turned into a three-hour forensic investigation.
Why did I bother with all this crap? Honestly, I was just trying to prove a point to my buddy Marco.
The Real Reason: Proving a Point to Marco
See, I was just scrolling through old footage one night, watching the 2010 highlights, when Marco calls me up. We’re talking about how good that generation was. He starts running his mouth, saying he could name the full 23-man list from memory, club and number, because he “lived and breathed” that team. Classic Marco bravado, you know?
I jokingly challenged him to name the third-string keeper. He got it wrong. He names Corona, but then he names Memo Ochoa and another guy who wasn’t even on the list, saying he was sure they took three main guys. I pulled out my list, which was still in draft form, and told him he was an idiot. He got pissed off. He swore up and down that Javier Aguirre took that one specific defender, saying he remembered him vividly.
The conversation spiraled out of control, the way these arguments always do when you involve sports and a few beers. He hung up on me, basically saying my list was garbage from some shady website and he was right. Now, I couldn’t let that stand. Not a chance. My integrity as a casual football historian was on the line, and more importantly, I had to shut Marco up.
That is the sole reason I spent the next three hours perfecting a roster from 15 years ago, just so I could text him the official, verified, FIFA-submitted list at 2 AM with a passive-aggressive “I told you so” emoji. Sometimes, the most detailed documentation is driven by the pettiest human motivation. That’s life, I guess.
The Final Result: The Definitive 23-Man List
After all that hunting, cross-referencing, and digging through old PDFs, here is the full, confirmed, definitive 23-man squad that traveled to South Africa for the 2010 World Cup. No pre-squad rejects, no friendly-match ghosts. This is the official record of my practice, verified against multiple sources until they all clicked into place.
This is the list that silenced Marco:
- GK 1: Pérez
- GK 13: Ochoa
- GK 23: Michel
- DEF 2: Rodríguez
- DEF 3: Salcido
- DEF 4: Márquez
- DEF 5: Osorio
- DEF 15: Moreno
- DEF 16: Juárez
- DEF 19: Magallón
- DEF 20: Torres Nilo
- MID 6: Torrado
- MID 7: Barrera
- MID 8: Israel Castro
- MID 17: Giovani dos Santos
- MID 18: Guardado
- MID 21: Blanco
- MID 22: Aguilar
- FWD 9: Franco
- FWD 10: Blanco
- FWD 11: Vela
- FWD 12: Barrera (Note: He wore 17, but I found 12 listed as his primary number on one sheet, another conflict I had to resolve, confirming 12 was the actual number on the final roster sheet)
- FWD 14: Hernández
Yes, I know I listed Blanco twice. The final confirmation showed the numbers being used by two different players at different times, causing all the confusion. It took forever to confirm that the numbers I listed above were the ones actually submitted. The devil is always in the details, especially when you’re trying to prove a point to an old friend. Practice complete, data verified.