GOLD CUP: Mexico Trash Cuba 6-0

Striker Oribe Peralta scored a hat-trick as Mexico ended a seven-match winless streak with a 6-0 rout of Cuba in the Concacaf Gold Cup on Thursday. Trinidad and Tobago also won easily in the other Group C match, dispatching Guatemala 3-1.

Six-time Gold Cup winners Mexico dominated from the start, scoring four goals in the first half at a packed Soldier Field. It was difficult to tell whether the result was proof of a Mexican resurgence, however, given that six members of the Cuban squad were unable to obtain visas to enter the United States, while another reportedly defected once the team arrived in Chicago.

MEXICO 1 CAMEROON: Oribe Peralta Secures Three Points For Mexico

Mexico got their World Cup campaign off to a perfect start with a 1-0 win over Cameroon — but again the officials took much of the limelight.

The winner came just after the hour through Oribe Peralta, Mexico’s top-scorer in qualifying, who pounced on the loose ball after Charles Itandje had saved well from Giovani dos Santos to slot into the empty net.

But Mexico should already have been well in control of the match, with Dos Santos having two goals wrongly ruled out for offside before the break. Replays showed he was behind the last defender when latching onto a cross to fire home. And then he was adjudged offside from a corner when the ball had flicked off the head of a Cameroon player.