Snip: He accepted a scholarship to San Diego State and appeared in 15 games, starting three, as a true freshman. ... Corona spent the summer working at a soccer shop, and he's currently on an extended trial with Club Tijuana Xoloitzcuintles De Caliente, the second-division outfit which nearly gained promotion to Mexico's top tier last season. A Xolos spokesman described Corona as “one of our biggest prospects” and said he expects him to be offered a contract “soon” that would include tuition fees at a Tijuana school. For now, Corona ventures across the border for games with the Xolos' third-division team on weekends . . . while taking classes at Southwestern College in Chula Vista and trying to save money. In one sentence, he says he “plans” to return to Montezuma Mesa, to the largely Anglo world of college soccer, and use his remaining three years of eligibility. In the next, he admits if the Xolos offer him a contract, “I probably would sign.” In the next: “But I don't know. It would be a tough decision.” http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/sep/30/corona-torn-between-pro-college/ Born in LA in 1990: http://goaztecs.cstv.com/sports/m-soccer/mtt/corona_joe00.html
Re: Joe Corona to Mexico? Is he related to Joe Sixpack? Way to float that one right down the middle DMN
Re: Joe Corona to Mexico? http://www.mlssoccer.com/news/article/gringo-report-ochoa-tallies-estudiantes Corona is getting playing time at Club Tijuana.
Re: Joe Corona to Mexico? He scored a goal and has 665 minutes through 10 games in the Liga de Ascenso: http://www.femexfut.org.mx/portalv2/secciones.aspx?s=1473&ep=938&dd=1
Re: Joe Corona to Mexico? He was subbed out at around the '30 mark last game. I hope he's not seriously injured. Club Tijuana are in the promotion hunt.
Re: Joe Corona to Mexico? Does he have a step brother named Joe Bimbo? They'll be hits down in Mexico.
Re: Joe Corona to Mexico? Yeah, they are a serious operation. New 33K seat stadium and #2 in the Mexican 2nd tier table now. An ambitious club with a bigger budget than most MLS teams.
Re: Joe Corona to Mexico? Corona played 15 games (13 starts) for Club Tijuana in the regular season and scored 1 goal. He lost his starting spot towards the end of the season. Tijuana had the best record in the regular season and as a result get a bye to the semifinals of the second flight Liga de Ascenso playoffs which will be played next week. Corona is age eligible for the Olympic squad Hat tip to Balerion's excellent youth national team tracking thread
Re: Joe Corona to Mexico? Congrats to Corona and company for winning the 2nd division title. http://www.mlssoccer.com/news/article/gringo-report-corona-tijuana-claim-championship
Re: Joe Corona to Mexico? Joe scored a header in the second game of the Clausura season against the Leones Negros: http://www.mediotiempo.com/futbol/mexico/cronicas/2011/01/25/leones-negros-1-1-tijuana-el-campeon-del-ascenso-ya-sumo_33635 News Flash: the Xolos will play an exhibition game against the LA Galaxy at USD's Torero Stadium on March 2 at 7pm: http://www.lasoccernews.com/teams/galaxy2.php?article_id=6607
Re: Joe Corona to Mexico? Looks like this kid is good. He caught the eye of Bruce http://espn.go.com/blog/los-angeles/soccer/post/_/id/6622/galaxy-eyes-local-talent-in-s-d-tieloss
Re: Joe Corona to Mexico? Glad to see he showed well. Find it ironic that Bruce didn't know about him being a San Diego kid given his now infamous comment about their not being talent hidden in the Hispanic communities that the mainstream American soccer community didn't already know about. Also calls into question the Galaxy's scouting if they didn't know about Corona since he played at SDSU in 2008, AFTER Arena had taken over with LAG. (Granted, Arena had a lot to clean up when he first got to the Galaxy so scouting freshmen at the regional schools probably wasn't high on his to-do list.) SDSU even played an away game at UCLA in which Joe Benny scored a goal. http://goaztecs.cstv.com/sports/m-soccer/stats/2008-2009/sdsuucla.html BTW, had to chuckle about Becks' comments about visiting TJ with Posh. Can just picture the two of them strolling down Revolucion Boulevard to hit Adelitas or catch a donkey show.
Re: Joe Corona to Mexico? I had the pleasure of attending this game with my son. It was the most entertaining professional match I have ever attended. The crowd was all over it, and the atmosphere was electric. I hope they do this every year. (Next year better parking plan, though.) Joe stood out from the start. He was creating plays, getting past defenders into dangerous areas, and generally looking like the class of the field. He almost scored at one point--Dunivant saved it when his shot got past Ricketts and was about to cross the goal line. It was a gas seeing Beckham, Donovan, et al up so close. Since my son plays for USD, he was especially thrilled to watch all those stars playing on his turf. I'm a Nomad booster, and there were three Nomads on the field in this game. Joe Corona, as mentioned, did Nomads proud. The other two Nomads played for Galaxy and didn't have good games. Much as I love wild and crazy guy Frankie Hejduk, I cringed when he ran onto the field in the second half and immediately threw a couple of his infamous crash tackles. One of his fouls led to a Xolos goal. Jovan Kirovski was another second-half substitution, and he didn't do anything terrible except fluff his PK--which happened to be the deciding one.
Re: Joe Corona to Mexico? This just in... Yeah, WE know who Joe Corona is! Why didn't Bruce Arena? And why doesn't the USMNT? http://sportifi.com/news/The-Biggest-Name-in-American-Soccer-Today-Joe-Corona-870972.html
Re: Joe Corona to Mexico? Joe scored again last weekend in 2-0 victory for TJ. He's climbing the Yanks Abroad scorers' table!
Re: Joe Corona to Mexico? The guy is pretty good, but I am not sure he is US team caliber just yet. He should really either transfer to a better Mexican team or to MLS.
Re: Joe Corona to Mexico? Ideally, he can just move up to the top flight in Mexico with his current club.
Re: Joe Corona to Mexico? So Corona and Tijuana are in the second tier playoffs again this spring. They're in a two-leg semifinal against Marco Vidal and Leon. TJ won the first game yesterday 1-0. Here's a report in Spanish that hopefully someone whose Spanglish is better than mine can translate. http://www.femexfut.org.mx/portalv2/aspx/WEB_DetalleNoticia.aspx?pnIDNtca=32606 JBC is mentioned in the writeup but I'm not sure what it says he does. Because they won the Apertura, does TJ automatically get promoted or do they have to jump through more hoops to do that?
Re: Joe Corona to Mexico? Only one team from the Liga de Ascenso is promoted, so the champion of the Apertura will go into a two-game playoff against the champion of the Clausura. If Tijuana wins both tournaments, they will be automatically promoted.
Re: Joe Corona to Mexico? Gracias. Only one team gets promoted a year? That makes it tough to move up, doesn't it?
Re: Joe Corona to Mexico? Yes, it does. The Mexican system also makes it very tough to stay up once you get to the top division. Relegation is decided based on a three-year point average. In practice, this means that any team with at least one decent season in the last three is basically shielded from relegation. The promoted team will have only one season that goes towards the average, so sometimes they are relegated even when they do better than 4-5 other clubs if those 4-5 clubs have had years that bring their average up. '06-'07 -- promoted before season: Queretaro. relegated after season: Queretaro '07-'08 -- promoted before season: Puebla. relegated after season: Veracruz. Puebla finished 14th of 18 and 11th of 18 in the Apertura and Clausura, yet avoided relegation by just three points. '08-'09 -- promoted before season: Juarez. relegated after season: Necaxa '09-'10 -- promoted before season: Queretaro. relegated after the season: Juarez '10-'11 -- promoted before season: Necaxa. relegated after season: Necaxa It seems like a bit of a merry-go-round, right? Most of reason these teams are relegated is that they aren't very good, but the system stacks the deck against them a little more steeply.