A solid effort, but room for improvement.

If the Mexican national team had a school report for 2017, it would read something like the above. Overall, it was a fairly satisfactory 12 months for El Tri, but the year also made it abundantly clear where Mexico needs to improve and find solutions before the World Cup swings around next summer.

There were 15 wins, six draws (over 90 minutes) and four losses for Juan Carlos Osorio's side in 2017. El Tri finished the year in 16th place in the FIFA rankings, which seems a fair reflection of where Mexico is heading into 2018.

Mexico's relative ease in qualifying for Russia 2018 was put in perspective by the United States' failure to make the World Cup. Mexico had been the story for all the wrong reasons four years ago, and while El Tri just scraped over the qualifying line ahead of Brazil 2014, the No. 1 priority for the Mexican federation in the cycle ahead of 2018 was to leave that drama behind.

That was achieved in 2017 with a certain degree of swagger. Only October's final-day defeat to Honduras in San Pedro Sula ended Mexico's undefeated World Cup qualifying record. El Tri finished in first place, five points ahead of Costa Rica and with only seven goals conceded over 10 games.

Yet it won't have been lost on Osorio that 22-year-old winger Hirving Lozano was Mexico's top goal scorer in qualifying. The PSV Eindhoven star netted six goals in 2017 for El Tri -- two more than Javier "Chicharito" Hernandez, who became Mexico's all-time leading goal-scorer in March.

Lozano's rise in prominence, his move from Pachuca to PSV and the way he has responded to the challenge in Europe have been among Mexico's highlights of 2017. Lozano's brace against Belgium in November was the outstanding performance of the year from any national team player. If PSV can hold on to him until after the World Cup, the Dutch club might just be able to sell him for a record fee for a Mexican player.

Aside from Lozano, Mexico has remained largely consistent in terms of the starters. Sure, Osorio's rotation policy has been there for all to see when there are two games with little space in between, but for the most important matches, a clear starting XI is evident.