“Enn-JOYYY this unforrrgGEDDABLE Fifa Worrrld Cup … expPERRIENCE!!” the strangely guileless American-accented public address had commanded, with 40 minutes still to run before the delayed kick-off in Mexico City.
Er. OK then. Looking out over the mist-shrouded cliff face of the Estadio Azteca, drenched to the inner seams in generational rain, throbbing through the chest from the endless waves of noise, the word enjoy just didn’t seem to capture the basic sensory experience.
England played and defeated an occasion here. Don’t play the occasion: this is always the advice. But Mexico in the Azteca isn’t really anything else. The only way not to play this occasion is not to play at all.
In the event this was the most extraordinary, agonising night of football as an experience of the mind, body, bones, guts, blood and back of the neck. During which England overcame not only the Mexican national football team over 90 minutes plus an extendable eternity of added time; but an event, an iconography, a set of ghosts.
Down to 10 men and faced with the relentless hostile will of the Azteca crowd the players took themselves into some deep, strange places. This was total immersion, a knockout game that felt at times like watching Colonel Kurtz play Colonel Kurtz at full-contact death-match ping-pong.
England will now go to Miami to play Norway on Saturday for a place in the semi-finals of the World Cup, reward for what is, in a relatively thin field, their greatest overseas World Cup knockout victory.
They played here for almost 50 minutes with 10 men against a host nation in its own temple of doom. They had the game twice, almost threw it way twice, then held on to it at the end with the bloodied tips of their fingernails, to the extent Jordan Henderson somehow ended up putting himself in hospital just trying to celebrate victory in a way that felt proportionate.
But this was a day when reason disappeared, and when time did strange and terrible things, the clocks turned slowly, then quickly, then stopped, then scrolled backwards. Most notably in the deep gouge of the final 20 minutes, and the descent into something that felt less like sport, more like a highly formalised peyote dream.
By that stage Raúl Jiménez had scored from the spot to make the score 3-2 to England, a man down after Jarell Quansah’s red card. How to get from that point to the end of this, 20 more minutes of regular time and already no air left to breathe, Mexico pushing England back into their own deep double bolt?
This was always one of those days when football feels like an abstract entity, too big to be contained by teams and tactics and the shapes on the TV screen. Even in its quiet times Mexico City is a place of constant churning energies, like a thriving rebel megalopolis from the Star Wars-verse, where things are always being furiously built out of parts.
This was one if its quiet times. From the early morning, football was happening, the roads around the Ángel de la Independencia thick with klaxons, drums, shaving-foam showers, green shirts clustered around the ceremonial Birdman, streets already closed or being closed or basically giving up.
The atmosphere around the city through that extended buildup was agreeably loose and unmanicured, with a sense looming over the day of some vast and leaky overblown event in train that is by now its own entity, an emotional cloud about to open.
From midday the city was assailed by a Nosferatu style storm, huge bolts of perfectly crisp forked lightning overhead, thunder to shake the buildings. And this is a place that overflows when the rain is this heavy, becoming a vast rolling network of water features, gushing drains, overflows. Were England too hot-weather prepped. Could they do it on a cold wet night in Santa Úrsula?
The Azteca has been renovated but retains its full brutalist concrete glory, the ring of indestructible walkways, the sci-fi space-cruiser style wings around its retaining bowl. From the seats in the gods even the delay to kick-off felt epic and unassailable, like being told you now have to reclimb Everest just to get to the start line.
But the noise was still constant, ramped up a level for the pre-match playing of Wonderwall, greeted by huge and relentless boos. Hmm. A lot of Blur fans in the house, then.
The anthems, the tiny white and green shirts, even the absurd Fifa frippery had a kind of majesty to them. And by now this was one of those occasions where football creates its own self-contained world, where just for a moment, nothing can possibly exist outside this space.
Fast forward, then, to those final 10 minutes. By now England were gasping in lungfuls of Azteca air, 3-2 up but fighting what felt like looming defeat. The clock is never your friend in football. Somehow it was only 80 minutes. Wait, how did we actually get to 80 minutes? Thomas Tuchel had been breathlessly present in every second of this, pouring his energies into decoding those great, fat, soggy, passing moments.
He sent on Dan Burn, Djed Spence and John Stones, five defenders flat across the back as Mexico swarmed pleasantly but without real incision, like being assailed by a swarm of dandelion seeds.
Every England player was by now fully inside this space, the close-quarter wrestles, the fine angles, the need to stay still and upright even in the tightest of crushes, where every tick of the clock becomes its own distinct event.
But then of course England were playing an occasion and also a place. Mexico kicked off unbeaten here in 10 World Cup matches. In many way this place is the World Cup. Not just on the basic numbers, a record 24 games played, but also in myth and imagery. It’s hazy grainy summer light. It’s El Diego redefining superstardom. It’s 1970, Brazil, crowds swarming the pitch transported with joy just at the beauty and the glory and the art, football’s own Woodstock.
What were England’s memories here before tonight? El Diego, the brilliance, the chicanery, Peter Shilton waving his arms around like a distressed orangutan warding off a swarm of hornets. That was also 40 years ago. And time, well time turns out to be a strangely flexible thing.
Eighty-six minutes gone. The blessed relief of a Mexican offside, a yellow card, eating their own seconds away. Eighty-eight minutes and the game was now an event taking place exclusively around the England goal. Spence backspun the ball away from two green shirts in front of goal, breakdance defence. Whatever it takes.
Harry Kane came off having run himself into the turf. The gut punch of 11 minutes of added time came and went,
It was hard, at that point to even remember that much earlier in the day this game had actually kicked off. Tuchel had gone with solidity at the start, bringing in Quansah at right-back. And England’s first act was to launch a hard flat howling Jordan Pickford punt into the Mexican area. This seemed a good idea. Mexico like to start in a swarm. England prefer to start like a creaky old man getting out of bed and packing his morning pipe, slippers on the wrong feet, newspaper upside down.
England had played well in the first half. They played it slow for a bit, drawing an explosion of furious shouts and whistles. Tuchel was here in blue raincoat and waterproof ankle swingers, like a malnourished minor duke out walking the hounds, and he was up on his feet waving his arms as Jordan Pickford made a wonderful save on 15 minutes from a Jiménez header.
Kane had two touches in the opening half hour. But on 36 minutes England scored. Bukayo Saka made it with a lovely run and floated cross for Jude Bellingham to head home. And then it was two, Bellingham again, sliding in and wanting it into the net after England had counterpressed.
Maybe 2-0 is a difficult lead. England collapsed for a bit and conceded before half-time as the stadium surged and writhed. Half-time came like a rescue helicopter. But England came out strong and were winning this game right up until Quansah’s deserved red card for a reckless lunge on 53 minutes. He had played well to that point, stately and upright, chugging about like a police launch on the River Thames.
England scored again, Kane converting a penalty. And so, into the pain zone. By the end Mexico had begun to shoot wildly from strange angles, melting a little themselves. And finally it arrived, the end of an event, the defeat of a spectacle, the players simply collapsing where they stood.
It will take some time to recover from this. “The players are exhausted to the next level and it is beautiful to see,” Tuchel said, smiling a strange, wonky, gleeful smile. And he was right. They were, and it was.
