Hard to emphasize exactly how important these two legged matches are for the teams involved, go through and you can book your flight to Brazil for next Summer, lose and you will be watching on television. A massive incentive for both, but football in New Zealand is considered a poor third to both Rugby Union and Cricket and if the Kiwis do not make it to Brazil, it will be news for one day and deep down, few will actually expect their team to beat the Mexicans over two legs. In Mexico football is the number one, two and three sport, if they come up short, heads will roll ( actually, they already have, but the cull will continue), the nation will feel humiliated and be in mourning for weeks, it will be a disaster. No pressure then !

The hosts have messed up qualification, they should have waltzed into a top two spot and Mexican FA officials should be in Brazil checking out facilities and not here in Mexico City biting their fingernails. Luckily, they get one more chance to put things right ,all the advantages are with them ahead of this first leg and they will be looking for a big lead to take on the long, long flight to Wellington for the return next week.

Things have gone bad quickly for Mexico, it seems only a short time ago, it was only a short time ago that they were Olympic Champions, had just won the Gold Cup beating their biggest rival, the USA, heavily in the final and the conveyor belt of talent looked full to overflowing, the under 17 team had won the World Cup and the U20's had come up just short finishing third, everything looked very rosy in the El Tri garden.

Now Miguel Herrera has been charged with the task of getting Mexico to Brazil, not only is he their fourth coach of 2013, he is the fourth in five qualification matches ! However, should he and his team fail, the blame is going to rise a lot further up the Federation food chain.

Herrera has at least made some decisions and made them quickly , he opted not to call up any European based players, feeling that jet lag would hurt performances, but I think it was more about the change in formation and wanting to stick with players he knew personally. It is a brave decision, but easy to understand as he has been able to work solidly with his domestic players and they have held four training camps in the last month. The team beat Finland 4-2 in San Diego at the end of last month and everyone was relieved that the goals came at long last, defensively they still looked suspect, but were working on a huge change in formation in that game, switching from 4-2-3-1 to 3-5-2 and things have looked better in a series of low key matches against club teams since.

Now the team have to do the job at the Azteca in front of 105,000 expectant supporters, that puts pressure on the host, but is also a daunting atmosphere for the visitors to play in, not only that, but they have the altitude of Mexico City (2,225 m) to deal with, with most of the major New Zealand cities at sea level. The visitors flew into Los Angeles and on to Mexico City on Monday, there are many theories about the best way to handle altitude, fly early and acclimatize, or late and hope to get out before it fully kicks in. The problems do not stop there, many of the players have already had to fly 11,000 km , a 14 hour flight, across a whopping 18 time zones.

The Kiwis have a whole host of players very short of match fitness and might not be able to call upon several of their "bigger" names in a squad very short of those, one, Winston Reid was injured in training last week and misses out both games. A 37 yo part timer will be asked to fill in for Reid in central defence and he will be closely examined by the speedy Mexican forwards.

This match is massive in Mexico, but has ramifications elsewhere, not least in the US, where FIFA are hugely keen to develop the game and where 50m football mad "Mexican Americans" live, the hispanic marketing sector is fast growing and very valuable and if money talks, it is saying that Mexico have to be in Brazil 2014.

The first goal will be key he said, stating the obvious, but if they get that inside the first hour, it will settle everyone down and they can build on that over the final 30 minutes when I expect the visitors to start to run out of steam and lose concentration. 1.5 units Mexico -2 goals 2.06-2.08 asian line/Ibramarket.

Good Luck.