Mexico needed nine minutes between the 22nd and 31st to settle this Round of 32 tie at the Estadio Banorte, and Ecuador spent the remaining hour chasing a game they never looked like finding. Two goals, both involving Julián Quiñones, and the hosts were through. The rest was administration.
Quiñones was the hinge of this match. He scored the first himself on 22 minutes, converting Roberto Alvarado's lay-off to open the scoring, and then turned provider nine minutes later, teeing up Raúl Jiménez to make it 2-0. From that point, Javier Aguirre's side managed the evening without fuss, defending their lead with a composure that left Ecuador's statisticians clutching those eight corner kicks like an alibi that never quite held up.
It was a curious game in that Ecuador had the ball rather more than Mexico would have minded, finishing with 57 per cent possession and 407 passes to Mexico's 319. But they created next to nothing with it. A single shot on target across 90 minutes tells its own story. Moisés Caicedo was tidy and combative in midfield, and John Yeboah offered genuine energy on the right, but the final third remained stubbornly closed. Gonzalo Plata drifted without ever threatening, and Enner Valencia, who has carried Ecuador so many times in tournaments past, was substituted before the hour without having troubled Rangel once.
Mexico were not exactly profligate themselves, but they were brutally efficient. Their expected goals figure of 1.02 understates the control they exerted once the game was settled. Jiménez, who is rarely wasted when chances fall his way, departed on 74 minutes with his goal banked. Alvarado, sharp and direct throughout the first half and into the second, made way at 80. By then the work was comprehensively done.
Ecuador's evening ended with a red card for Piero Hincapié in the 90th minute, a fittingly frustrating coda to a performance that offered plenty of possession and precious little penetration. Beccacece had set his side up in a 4-4-2 that gave Caicedo licence to screen and Valencia to press from the front, but two lapses in nine first-half minutes proved fatal to both the shape and the ambition.
The centre-back pairing of Hincapié and Willian Pacho had generally kept Jiménez quiet before he scored, but that was the one moment of inattention they could not afford. Once 2-0, Ecuador's task became about manufacturing a comeback they did not have the cutting edge to produce. They tried, in their own way. Eight corners came and went. None produced a serious chance. Galíndez, at the other end, made one save to Rangel's one, but the gulf in terms of genuine threat was stark.
Raúl Rangel, in the Mexico goal, was rarely inconvenienced. The backline behind him, marshalled by César Montes and Johan Vásquez, was compact and organised throughout. Erik Lira ran the full 90 minutes in central midfield and won the physical battle, giving Quiñones and Alvarado the licence to press and probe in the spaces Ecuador's back four left between the lines.
If there was a single stretch that defined the tie, it was those nine minutes either side of the half-hour mark. Mexico were clever enough to make them count. Ecuador were not quick enough to stop them.
Mexico move on. Ecuador go home having controlled the ball and very little else.