Almada Defends Chiquito Sánchez: What the América 3-2 Necaxa Data Says

In the 88th minute, with the score at 2-2, Erick "Chiquito" Sánchez surged forward in a high press. Necaxa's Danny Leyva mistimed his touch and lost the ball just outside his own box. A few passes later, Miguel Borja scored the goal that sealed a 3-2 win for América. The stands erupted. But the notable detail lies elsewhere: this is the very player a section of América's support still insists is not good enough for Mexico's biggest club. I have rewatched that sequence many times. And one thing stands out: what the fans call a limitation is precisely what head coach Guillermo Almada needs most from this Mexican midfielder. Right after the match, Almada said: "I want to make one thing clear about Chiquito." He spoke at the exact moment public pressure on his former charge peaked. Numbers do not lie, but the people supplying them sometimes do. To understand why Almada had to speak, look at the structure of Liga MX Apertura 2026. The league splits into two short tournaments — Apertura and Clausura — ending with the Liguilla play-offs. América entered the season as title contenders, while Necaxa sit in the lower-middle tier of the table. A 3-2 home win over an opponent like that was the predicted outcome, but the narrow margin leaves the result far from comfortable. Erick Sánchez arrived at América from Pachuca, where he had worked under Almada. This is the coach-familiar recruitment model: a manager bringing in a player he already knows well. That pattern often reduces integration risk, but it says nothing about cost efficiency in the transfer market. Based on my experience tracking deals in both South America and Southeast Asia, a familiar pattern emerges: the coach creates a comfort zone for a former player, and that comfort zone is tested the moment results stop coming. What stands out is that the pressure here is individual, not team-level. The team is winning. Yet a section of América's fanbase remains unconvinced by Sánchez, and social-media criticism targets him rather than the collective. This is the most dangerous kind of pressure: it does not disappear when the team wins, it simply waits to flare up after a single bad touch. I went back through every stat line from Sánchez's performance against Necaxa to see what Almada was leaning on when he called the player one of his trusted men. Pass accuracy: 80%. Ball recoveries: 5. Defensive contributions: 4. Starts: all six of América's Apertura 2026 matches. Ground duels: won 4 of 9, roughly 44%. Aerial duels: won 2 of 5, or 40%. There are two ways to read that table. The first, Almada's way, emphasises volume. Five recoveries and four defensive contributions is a high figure for a midfielder who is not a pure destroyer. Almada said Sánchez's value lies in both his defensive work and his offensive contribution. He is right on function: Sánchez is used as an interior midfielder, a two-way number 8 who presses and links play. The second reading, the fans' way, looks at efficiency. An 80% pass accuracy is adequate, not outstanding. And both duel figures sit below the 50% break-even line. For a central midfielder, losing more than half of your one-on-one contests is a signal worth noting. The true value of a player does not lie in the contract, but in the numbers people forget. The forgotten numbers here are 44% and 40%. They do not appear in Almada's statement. They do not appear in the critical tweets either. But they exist, and they are in the match record. So why does Almada keep picking him? Because the press that led to Borja's goal is exactly the kind of action the coach needs. An interior midfielder in a high-pressing system is not measured by duel win rate, but by how often he forces an opponent into a mistake in the opposition half. In the 88th minute, with the whole team running on empty, Sánchez still pushed forward. Danny Leyva lost the ball. Borja scored. That is a concrete causal chain, verifiable on video. I do not write from emotion. I write from match records, bank statements, and the things people try to hide. Here, the record is clear: a defensive action became a goal. But the numbers must be placed correctly. In Mexican football, a pressing interior midfielder is standard, not innovative. Sánchez is not a tactical invention. He is a standard cog in Almada's system, which means his value comes from reliability, not from moments of genius. A player like that is only useful when he is present often enough for the system to run smoothly. Six starts in six matches is the clearest signal. Almada does not rotate this position. Sánchez is treated as a structural component, not a rotational option. When a coach hands a player an automatic starting spot, he is staking his own credibility on it — and Almada made that bet publicly, on camera, right after a narrow win. The limits of the evidence also need stating. Every conclusion above rests on a single match. This is a single-point sample. There is no expected-goals data, no detailed league table, no wage, transfer fee or contract-length information for Sánchez. Any judgment about the cost efficiency of this deal therefore has no foundation. A purely sporting article cannot produce a financial conclusion, and I will not invent one. If Almada is right on function, he may still be covering a technical weakness. The 44% and 40% figures are not accidents. They suggest that in matches where opponents press physically and play direct, Sánchez can be neutralised. For a central midfielder in Liga MX, where the intensity of one-on-one duels is very high, that is a real risk — even if it has only appeared in one match sample. The blind spot of the story lies elsewhere. Almada has tied his own hands. By publicly defending Sánchez, he has turned dropping him into a political decision rather than a purely technical one. If Sánchez's form dips, Almada cannot simply bench him, because doing so would be read as bowing to fan pressure. Public defence shields the player in the short term, but transfers part of the risk onto the coach himself. It is worth remembering that public opinion does not operate on data logic. The conclusion about a duel weakness rests on one match. A single sample proves nothing. But fans do not wait for a sufficient sample. They judge by feeling, and feeling tends to anchor on the worst moment. What to watch is not the goals. It is whether Sánchez keeps his starting spot when América meet a physical opponent, and whether Almada substitutes him mid-match. One substitution will prove nothing. Three in a row will. Football is not just 90 minutes on the pitch. The dirtiest part lies off it, where there are no cameras — and there, public opinion does not need sufficient data to convict.