KENNESAW, GEORGIA – The very start of this World Cup trip, and the grand idea to find out whether and how hosting the World Cup resonated in smalltown USA, did not go well. I landed in Seattle, a large World Cup host city, and sidled up to the desk to pick up my hire car, waiting in line with a group of Belgium supporters who were touring before their first group game in the city.
Not only did the kind gent at the desk not know that a World Cup was coming, he had no idea which sport it involved when prompted by a colleague (there was bunting in the terminal building, but not at car hire). Nothing like really cutting through your search for a World Cup buzz.
This always promised to be a World Cup of host cities. I am attending matches in nine of the US’s 11 – I left Seattle too soon and the Miami semi-final was just too far south for the car. In each of the six cities I have visited so far, I’ve found an unshakeable major tournament identity that has surpassed my expectations.
All the usual hallmarks are there: electronic road signs warning of soccer traffic, the bars with bunting and promises of watch parties and drinks deals. The walking, talking Epcot-ification of downtowns with umpteen different nations represented by home or away shirts. This is normal. This is how it always is.
And the vast hordes of travelling supporters have been aided by something I’ve not experienced before: locals choosing a team for each match and offering their dedicated support, if only for one day. That doesn’t feel twee – it’s uplifting.
Some of the views on his epic odyssey have been absolutely stunning (Photo: Daniel Storey)
The difference with the US, and the element of the tournament and its politics that fascinated me just as much, is the vast expanse in between those cities. In Qatar in 2022, the two stadiums furthest apart were separated by a 48-minute drive, give or take traffic. This is basically the opposite. I wanted to find the World Cup ghost towns.
They are everywhere and I have seen only a fraction and a snapshot. In Grants Pass, Oregon, I went to a quiz in a bar where one of the questions asked for the identity of the US’s first opponent and almost nobody guessed Paraguay. In Ottawa, Kansas, a lovely lady named Sam – almost all of my conversation comes at the motel buffet breakfast – said her nephew was “probably” into soccer but had no concept of the tournament itself.
In Guthrie, Oklahoma, I spoke with Liam and Jennifer – a young couple who had six young children and a puppy with them. As a childless man who got a migraine just by thinking about the noise in that minivan, it was some surprise when they seemed to think I was the unusual one for travelling the US to watch soccer. Maybe they had a point.
In Pleasant View, Tennessee, the only real show in town was selling fireworks for a special 4 July celebration marking the USA’s 250th birthday.
A Canada game was on the television in a barbecue restaurant, but I was very much the only interested customer. When I asked the barman if he’d had much interest, he laughed (and I won’t attempt the drawl): “We have it on, but we have to have something on.”
This information will draw rolled eyes in some quarters – typical Americans not caring about football and thus unworthy of hosting the World Cup. Predictable insularity to the point of national solipsism. And yes, there is plenty of that about.
You are never more than 10 miles on a freeway from seeing an American flag large enough to cover an office building fluttering on a 100ft pole. That’s just how they roll, I’m afraid.
Have reached Columbus, Texas. Great smalltown Americana. And a Scotland away shirt. pic.twitter.com/U9UGVvMx8E
It’s also an absolutely forgivable scenario to not care – or not even know – about a tournament that has little to no impact upon your life. Lots of Americans rarely leave their state, life in smalltown USA can indeed feel parochial and a little claustrophobic and football tournaments don’t come to your backyard. The US has 11 host stadiums in an area the size of continental Europe and seven of them are close to the east or west coast.
My favourite fact is this (and I learned it in the state itself): Kentucky doesn’t just not have a World Cup stadium, but only one of the seven states it borders has a World Cup stadium too. That state is Missouri, which shares a 60-mile border with Kentucky. And here’s the kicker: that 60 miles does not include a road crossing. I met a guy named Paul in a diner in Bowling Green, not too far from that wild border, who wasn’t bothered about the World Cup. I’d have had a job convincing of its relevance to him.
Even state secularity is overplayed. I spent a day and night in El Paso, Texas and went to a winghouse inside converted train carriages. It is true that there were a group of Panamanians watching their match against Ghana (and within the immigrant experience is where the World Cup interest really shines), but I also sat at the bar next to a couple who inquired what I was doing in the US.
When I asked them if they had considered going to a game at either of the Texas stadiums (Houston and Dallas), the guy gently pointed out that the closest of the two was a round trip of 1,270 miles. Which is further than driving from Munich to Istanbul.
There have been towns where I’ve struggled to even find the World Cup matches on, but then these are often interstate stop-offs where fast food joints and motels are the usual fare and most local places shut early.
Anthonino's in The Hill, St. Louis. Where they have a mural on the outside to the USA beating England in the 1950 World Cup pic.twitter.com/z0eFt7qKze
The main staple – in Williams, Waco, Columbus, Warrensburg and Gainesville, small towns dotted across the south – are bars that have sport on TV because they always do. Often this is white noise to most of the clientele, but the matches are shown because they fight only with baseball and horse racing. In the evening you might get the sound turned up louder, but very rarely does the World Cup win that audio tussle.
And yes, to answer the obvious accusation, most Americans do prefer other sports. This is a sport-obsessed country, it’s just that they have so much choice and so much of that choice is brought closer to their own world.
Let me explain, using the El Paso example again. The nearest MLS club to El Paso is Austin FC, whose crowds are 20,000 and made up largely of locals. Austin to El Paso and back is an 18-hour drive. You simply aren’t going to interact with the sport in the same way as Europeans do.
What El Paso does have is UTEP and their college football team, whose Sun Bowl stadium has a capacity of 52,000. This is an unfair fight and pretending otherwise is foolhardy. This same scenario plays out across smalltown USA. You see more outward support – shirts, signage, car stickers – for high school football teams than anything to do with soccer.
The one exception to this rule, particularly in the south but it survives elsewhere too, is the Mexico shirt. I have seen perhaps 20-30 men’s national team – or USMNT as it likes to brand itself –shirts in the wild. I have seen 2,000-3,000 Mexico shirts. The white away kit is the accessory of this World Cup and the Mexican population in the US.
As I make these mini-judgements on an entire country, I continue to remind myself how much of this is projection. For all the criticism of the US’s interest in men’s soccer (and it’s both clearly growing, clearly led by the immigrant population and clearly led by interest in European leagues), is that unusual? If you had driven into the town of Pudozh in Karelia, Russia in June 2018 and chatted up locals with talk of Harry Maguire and the England lovetrain corner routine, would anyone have cared? I think not.
There’s another theory, and it came from Brian, one of my many new acquaintances. We began chatting at breakfast in Chesterfield, a suburb of St Louis, Missouri, and I asked him why the fervent support for the US national team appeared to come mainly from larger cities. His explanation was illuminating. Americans are a pretty patriotic bunch as a rule, but sport tends to localise loyalty.
Soccer, and its World Cup, is the exception. American football has no established World Cup – the NFL is enough. Baseball has the World Classic and basketball the Fiba World Cup and Olympics, but neither are the pinnacle of the sport – MLB and NBA are all you need. According to Brian, smalltown Americans just aren’t used to caring about global sporting events because they simply don’t need them.
He doesn’t mean that as criticism. In the major cities, support was fervent. Elsewhere, I found pockets of intense excitement, but typically when meeting those who call the US home now but have footballing ties to hereditary nations.
The support grew as the US national team continued to impress – success is always the easiest driver of legacy. The marketing machine is rolling: Pulisic, Robinson, Adams and McKennie are on every other advert that doesn’t have David Beckham in it. It will also take time and in great swathes of the country it may never happen – it’s OK to admit that.
On the Road USA
Join Daniel Storey on his 7,200-mile odyssey across the US to tell the stories of a World Cup like no other.
There is a line in Alan Sillitoe’s story “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner” about the silence of an early morning: “Everything’s dead, but good, because it’s dead before coming alive, not dead after coming alive.”
That’s how I feel about those countless small towns I’ve visited where I’ve heard brief references to the World Cup: a group game that catches a half-interested eye, stickers for sale in a provincial store, a kid in a Netherlands shirt in the middle of halfway to nowhere that makes you double take.
These are not World Cup ghost towns because something died, but because it didn’t come alive yet. One day it might. Football usually finds a way.
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“You know we’re in Salford, right?” joked Micah Richards as Joe Hart was eulogising about the “unbelievable energy” of the Azteca Stadium before England’s epic win over co-hosts Mexico.
Richards got a round of laughter in the studio, but the loveable pundit touched on one of the lively debates around this World Cup. Should the BBC be broadcasting from a futuristic studio thousands of miles away from the action? Does it affect the coverage? Do the viewers care? Or is it just one of those weird media obsessions?
Comparison is the thief of joy, as the famous saying goes, but here comparison is stealing the admiration that the BBC might have received for their state-of-the-art studio. The technology is impressive and it will be used by BBC Sport for years to come. The problem is, ITV’s backdrop has blown them out of the water.
Apart from the strange decision to give Emma Hayes a chalkboard in what looked like a kitchen, ITV have had a brilliant World Cup so far. When your wide shot is framed by the Statue of Liberty on one side and the Brooklyn Bridge on the other, it’s hard not to see that as the pinnacle of TV bases. I’m sure they would have loved to add a huge name like Zlatan Ibrahimovic to their pundit panel but not even their coffers can cover the rumoured £1.9m that Fox are paying the superstar former striker for his six weeks’ work.
It is almost impossible for the BBC to win in this situation. The derogatory articles and comments about the “cut-price coverage” or “lame game” were coming from the same pens which have written countless pieces about the number of BBC staff who have attended major sporting events in the past. I covered five World Cups for the BBC and four Olympic Games. I loved every minute of it but you always knew what was coming when you touched down.
‘The BBC turned down a ticket to the biggest party of the year,’ says Walker (Photo: BBC)
It doesn’t help that there is an assumption that foreign trips constitute a jolly. I’m not saying there aren’t amazing moments, but we used to work our backsides off and it wasn’t always as glamorous as you might imagine.
In my experience, the BBC was always incredibly careful about how it spent the licence fee. When we flew out for the World Cup in Brazil in 2014, we were all staying at a two-star hotel about half a mile away from our five-star ITV friends. Pictures of pundits in their rooftop swimming pool did not go down very well. It was always that way.
Budgets are tight and the BBC will have to live with the choice to turn down a ticket to the biggest party of the year. By not being there for the bulk of the tournament, you do lose authenticity. You lose the chance to reflect on what it’s like to walk those streets and you miss some of the magic of having a front row seat for the greatest show on earth.
It should be noted the BBC has sent reporters and commentators out to North America this summer but much of their work is taking place off-camera.
In a world of AI and fakery, authenticity has never been more important. It might seem trivial but ITV are doing well because you can see Mark Pougatch’s hair being blown around. Maybe the BBC need to invest in a wind machine.
And this isn’t about being anti-technology. Football Focus was the first BBC show to come from an entirely augmented studio. Apart from the desk and chairs, everything else was in the mind palace. It took your brain a few minutes to get used to the sea of green and you lost your perception of depth. It was hard to focus on Football Focus!
When I presented the Tokyo Olympics alongside Sam Quek, in an even bigger virtual studio, it looked out of this world. The viewer saw us in a multi-layered Japanese townhouse with a beautiful garden, koi carp swimming under the floorboards and a giant TV screen on the mezzanine.
In truth, Sam and I were sat at a tiny desk in a green box the size of a squash court. The difference is the Tokyo 2020 decision was made through necessity during the pandemic. The one for this summer’s World Cup was an editorial decision because of financial restraints and impending cuts hanging over our national broadcaster.
With all that said, I am really enjoying the coverage of this World Cup. The BBC analysis and commentary has been great and Hart has been a standout star while I am enjoying the blend of pundits on ITV.
The real test will come when we get to the final and the same game is on both channels. The BBC has long won that battle but what impact will the Salford switch have when the nation reaches for its remotes?
In the past, it’s been as much as 5-to-1 in favour of the BBC. If it’s anywhere near 50-50 then there will be some serious post-tournament conversations about decisions and the decision-makers.
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NEW YORK – Two things can be true of Cristiano Ronaldo. He will end his career without winning a World Cup and yet somehow, he is the perfect poster boy for an ever more surreal Fifa brand.
Portugal will remember this as their summer of squandered opportunity, Ronaldo’s obstructive presence the triumph of the celebrity cult over the finer mechanics of the game.
At 41, he should never have played as many minutes at this World Cup as he did; not least because he was supposed to be banned for two of them, before Fifa inexplicably intervened to stop him being suspended. Could you imagine?
None of the attributes which once made Ronaldo soar above the rest – with one exception – are present any longer. Spain left him in space that once would have been criminal. In the air, Aymeric Laporte and Pau Cubarsi made light work of him. At the break, he had had 12 touches, the fewest of anyone on the pitch.
That much was obvious to Bruno Fernandes, who became reluctant to cross to him at all, though not to his manager, Roberto Martinez. Such wilful blindness ultimately cost him his job – he resigned hours after the final whistle.
Martinez has spent the last few years travelling around the world frittering away the gilded epochs of golden generations. First, the great Belgium of Kevin De Bruyne, Vincent Kompany, Eden Hazard, Thibaut Courtois. With Portugal he was entrusted the world’s best midfield of Bruno, Vitinha, Joao Neves. Elsewhere Ruben Dias and Bernardo Silva, Joao Cancelo. In Nuno Mendes, the world’s best left-back.
Had the round of 16 gone to penalties, Vitinha, one of their better spot-kick takers, was already off, leaving his teammate 15 years his senior to plod around for the full 90.
This is the end of Ronaldo’s World Cup dream (Photo: Getty)
Martinez, himself born in Balaguer, Spain, has made a great show of singing the Portuguese national anthem. An act of greater patriotism would have been to give his adopted nation the best possible chance of winning the World Cup – not indulging what he must have known was an oversized ego hindering his team’s chances.
And it is clear that he did know, seeing as Portugal were never willing to fully commit to the bit. They did not operate around Ronaldo, turning him into a Haaland-type focal point through which everything else must flow. They would not leave him in the box and rather had their record goalscorer dithering 30 yards from goal.
For the last month Portugal have effectively been reduced to playing with 10 men, barring the moments Ronaldo found a more comfortable stride against Uzbekistan, and with the penalty against Croatia.
Martinez is not alone in this. In the deranged church of CR7, the manager is fighting an unwinnable war. Erik ten Hag will testify. At this World Cup, Carlo Ancelotti bowed to the same external pressure, opting for Neymar at the expense of Joao Pedro and Richarlison, needlessly handing him their final kick.
This is, at least, not a vintage Brazil side. The tragedy of the Ronaldo sect is that Portugal had their best opportunity to do something special since the days of Luis Figo and Rui Costa. All of it was thrown away in the name of pandering to an inflated sense of self-worth.
Ronaldo might have bowed out after Russia 2018. He certainly could have gone once Lionel Messi had beaten him to the punch in Qatar. That is how long the decline dates back – he did not manage a successful dribble in five matches at that tournament, nor in the five this summer. A player who once possessed his calibre must have felt deep down that the game was up and could not bring himself to concede it.
It did not have to end with such indignity. The staggering physical prowess of appearing on the world stage at his age has been lost in the noise that follows him in victory and defeat.
The heart has been ripped out of a World Cup dream but it is no longer even worthy of sympathy. The romantic appeal lay in his colleagues, who have been denied a moment that might never come around again.
After plenty of ceremonial, performative tears at the final whistle, Ronaldo’s will be the grandest goodbye. His teammates might find that hard to forgive.
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NEW HAVEN — There was some hope that the USA would get through their last-16 tie against Belgium in Seattle, perhaps even with Folarin Balogun playing a starring role. If this was the only way to shame Fifa into a full explanation, not just for the decision they made but how they got there and whether it establishes new precedent, why not? The USA’s exit allows this rotten case to be quickly brushed under the rug before the quarter-finals.
Maybe, but this was the appropriate end. You pulled all those levers. You left a sour taste. You slipped a viper into the tent of football’s governance and started a civil war between Fifa and Uefa, the two houses of the sport. And you did it all so that you could lose 4-1 to a barely functional Belgium team. Also-rans don’t usually come with asterisks.
There will be bitter disappointment at the manner of the exit, not least the calamitous third goal that clinched defeat. Goalkeeper Matt Freese may feel that he was fouled, but really it was just two athletes that got tangled up. That’s how it works now, right.
Was it all worth it? Over the course of this tournament, Mauricio Pochettino and the USMNT had made friends amongst travelling supporters and earned admirers for the courage and intensity of their play.
They had also gained new fans amongst their own soccer-sceptic population, thus evaporating a degree of the insularity and exceptionalism that can blow through US sport. They were, to be blunt and a little surprised, a pure good news story.
On the Road USA
Join Daniel Storey on his 7,200-mile odyssey across the US to tell the stories of a World Cup like no other.
That has changed over the last three days. Firstly, unless the USA actually reached the World Cup final, this controversy promised to be the overriding legacy of their tournament. Sorry, but we will forget Balogun twisting and turning against Paraguay. We won’t forget President Trump talking of his intervention and Senator Cruz thanking him for changing Fifa’s mind.
That may sound unfair. It certainly tars many innocent parties with the same brush, not least Balogun himself. But then that is the unfortunate nature of geopolitical collateral damage. And when your sitting President boasts of maximising the extent of his relationship with football’s governing body to aid the USA’s cause, reality is reality even if it’s bleak.
International managers and national associations play a good game of avoiding political issues. You can see their point: if governments are prepared to deal with grisly nation states then asking a bloke who has some coaching qualifications to take the stand is a bit much. It’s the guardians of the game who should be better.
Even that moral escape route is blocked here. For all that Trump played his role, we can be sure from Balogun’s place in the starting XI that US Soccer and Pochettino were at least willing conspirators. For all the hollering and deliberate moral selectivism of some in the US soccer community over the last 48 hours, everybody reasonable knows that Balogun should not have been playing. That includes Pochettino.
In 2019, after winning the Women’s World Cup, the United States Women’s National Team (USWNT) declined an invitation to visit President Trump’s White House because they did not want their success to be co-opted by a regime that had worked against their fight for equal pay and LGBTQ+ rights. That meant something.
In 2026, the USMNT relied upon the same President to personally intervene in their own cause and were then immediately knocked out of their host tournament. That means something too. A legacy has been soured. Memories will last for the wrong reasons. A reputation has been torched.
MEXICO CITY – It is often forgotten what an important part of England’s recent revolution Jordan Pickford has been.
A colourful character, he is as vital off the pitch as he is on it, keeping morale high in a way only people from that particular part of the north-east can.
Between the posts, he has been a master of consistency, with his distribution, when at the peak of his powers a few years ago, as good as anything we have seen on our shores.
Yet, before heading to Mexico City, Pickford had looked at his most vulnerable.
Even his own manager Thomas Tuchel flew off the handle at the Everton goalkeeper for not following orders in England’s opening World Cup victory over Croatia.
Little improved in the aftermath of that success. Pickford should have done better for both goals in that opener.
Nerves are not palpable in anything he does, but it was becoming a theme in the US.
When he was beaten at his near post against DR Congo, his place in the team, despite being such a loyal servant for so long, was under threat.
Tuchel doesn’t lose faith quickly and remained steadfast in his confidence in Pickford.
And, as he often does on the biggest occasions of all, the 32-year-old silenced the naysayers with a match-defining performance in Mexico, under the most intense examination Pickford has ever experienced.
“Having a world-class keeper behind you always helps,” Ezri Konsa said.
“He has made this many appearances for a reason.”
Pickford made several key saves to keep Mexico at bay (Photo: Getty)
As 40 years of hurt was finally laid to rest at the altar of the Azteca, England allayed fears they would succumb to the mighty stadium and its energy-sapping atmosphere, with a first-half double from Jude Bellingham setting up the best World Cup victory since 1966 in a breathless manner.
Such divine intervention would not have been possible without Pickford’s wrists of steel.
A stunning early save to deny Raul Jimenez certainly had some resemblance to Gordon Banks’s famous stop in Guadalajara 56 long years ago, if not quite of the same ilk to stand the test of time.
Nothing can be taken away from its importance, however.
What will most please Tuchel is just how flawless Pickford was away from the spectacular. He punched when he needed to punch, and clung on at every necessary moment. There were no rushes of blood to the head, no errors in judgement.
Ironically, he equalled Peter Shilton’s record of 17 World Cup appearances for England on the very spot where Diego Maradona changed the course of the former’s destiny.
“I was in the moment,” Pickford said.
“We all know when we come into pressure situations, I have got that character where I step up and I have got that mindset where I feel unbelievable.”
What a character he is. You need that self-confidence to stand up to the heat in places like the Azteca. And what a time for him to get his mojo back.
A siege mentality: that is what Pickford needs to shine.
Doubts will creep in over England’s chances of stopping Erling Haaland next, with six long days to go between silencing the Azteca and the quarter-final clash with Norway.
But Pickford won’t mind one bit. In fact, he will welcome any scepticism. That is when he comes into his own.
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England may have beaten better opponents and have certainly had more glamorous nights, but there can be few that their players and travelling supporters will ever have enjoyed more. If you get out of life, love and knockout World Cup matches what you put in, this team is suddenly everything. It is hard to process that there could be three more rounds of this.
England suffered in altitude, suffered with a delay, suffered in the noise, suffered without the ball and occasionally suffered with it. They suffered from a red card and a penalty conceded. They were lions, warriors and gladiators to a man, the whole Roman gamut.
This is what it means!
England breathe a sigh of relief as they celebrate a massive win over Mexico. pic.twitter.com/GNYHLiv1IT
As the final whistle blew, they fell to their knees not because they had been broken, but because somehow they were still in one piece. All that running, all that fighting, all that clearing and all that counter-attacking quality.
I thought Thomas Tuchel had got it wrong. I think we all thought that he had, on some level. Defending that deep, with one less player, against the World Cup co-hosts in their own stadium, was surely asking for too much. Forget a Mexican wave; England were attempting to hold back the tide.
But they did it. Dan Burn made eight defensive contributions after coming on, the World Cup Harry Maguire for the ChatGPT generation. John Stones came on to play the hits, apart from that bit where we thought he had scored an own goal and our stomachs fell through our feet. They headed and booted and occasionally kept cooler heads and found passes to release the pressure.
On the Road USA
Join Daniel Storey on his 7,200-mile odyssey across the US to tell the stories of a World Cup like no other.
Jordan Pickford is the only one to get his own paragraph. There are times when his eagerness feels a little showy to those who don’t know him well enough, but my goodness that chutzpah comes into its own when puffed-out chests are called for. Pickford made important saves before half-time and was impeccable when the going got tougher. On the night he became England’s joint-highest appearance maker, he proved that he is worthy of it.
It might feel like a several days ago now, but if the game was defended in the trenches it was won on the catwalk. What initially appeared to be a safety-first mentality was a trap for Mexico. England twice went through the gears and exactly, perfectly, created goals. They were curated an they were beautiful.
Jude Bellingham was the scorer of them both. His ability to be England’s right man in the right place with the right action is unerring and I love it more than almost anything I ever have following this team. He was still the last one sprinting and the first to congratulate every teammate. Let the doubt be forever evaporated, for it should never have existed in the first place.
Harry Kane did Harry Kane jobs which means being understatedly brilliant, winning the crucial header for one goal and burying a penalty in the fiercest atmosphere he must ever have experienced. A deserved word too for Anthony Gordon, who produced the best performance I’ve seen in his career with and without the ball. England aren’t in the quarter-final without his dashing runs.
We can be too quick to overlook intangible strengths: passion, courage, desire, comradeship. They become a little parodic in the wrong hands, cartoonish symbols of hyperbole. They shouldn’t. These players adore playing for their country because they know it comes with honour and responsibility. To all those who bleat about singing an anthem or try to divide us based upon discrimination, show them those 107 minutes.
And, for all that the above picks out individuals, it was the greatest team effort in overcoming short-term adversity that I can remember an England team ever producing
It’s only one game. One more step along the road.
But to overlook its meaning is to miss out on some of the spectacle and the glory. I’ll happily concede that I didn’t know if a Thomas Tuchel England team had this in them. I’ll concede too that there were at least 37 points of that match when I thought our race was run despite us never trailing.
They did it. They backed themselves to do it their way and they pulled it off. This was one of the World Cup displays by England, nostalgic montage fodder for the ages. It was a landmark night for a new era, a new-ish manager and some decidedly traditional principles.
Two hours after full-time, many in England were getting up for work. Not over here. Not in World Cupland. Please don’t take us home.
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MEXICO CITY — On a day when Fifa’s corruption sank to a nadir, an Azteca epic restored football’s soul.
And what better way to finally lay the beast to rest. Forty years on from Diego Armando Maradona’s brutal assault on the English psyche, Thomas Tuchel’s own celestial being healed an entire nation, against all odds.
Jude Bellingham’s first-half double, given all the mitigating circumstances, somewhat even eclipses what Maradona produced at the Azteca in 1986. The overall team performance, under the most excruciating pressure and scrutiny, as monumental as anything since 1966.
For those fortunate to be present in this footballing cathedral, we will all remember where we were for decades to come. Where, for once, England came out on the right side of history.
The healing process started early. Mexico is a country that continues to wrestle with itself, whether its unrelenting fight with drug cartels or socioeconomic issues. Until their national team plays football.
Tuchel’s key players stepped up (Photo: Getty)
Queues of green were lining up 10 hours before kick-off at the fanzone in Plaza de Constitucion, the processional Paseo de la Reforma a bustling metropolis in its own right. England supporters were lapping it up.
Even as the heavens opened, however, and a storm set in to delay kick-off by an hour, a pilgrimage to the Azteca could not be tarnished. To entertain the crowd during the delay, each nation got alternate songs. Interrupting the iconic Juan Gabriel, Oasis got the loudest jeer of the day – in case you were wondering which side of the Britpop debate Mexicans reside on.
The majestic sweep of the jaw-dropping Azteca must have felt like it was centimetres from England players’ faces as they boomed “y si si” upon kick-off.
The opening exchanges were pivotal, where England had to adapt to 25 per cent less oxygen in the air while battling to keep the fervour of the 80,000 Mexicans in the stands under wraps.
Jordan Pickford’s save from Raul Jimenez was not quite Gordon Banks’ denial of Pele in Guadalajara in 1970, but his best stop of the tournament so far helped edge England to parity at the first quarter.
The ole’s quickly died down as England weathered the storm. They’ve faced a low block for much of the tournament, but silenced the Azteca with one of their own for the first half hour.
In 98 glorious seconds late in the half, Bellingham became the first player to score twice in a World Cup match since that fateful day 40 years previously. Both runs were timed with incongruous acumen, making a mockery of the altiJude to head home the opener and arrive right on cue for a quickfire second.
Bellingham scored twice inside a minute (Photo: PA)
Back into the low block, only for Julian Quinones to quickly burst the barricades and awaken the Aztecan beast. England did well to hold on with the advantage until the interval, Bellingham making a heroic block down the other end.
Half-time pyrotechnics, even when losing, left a haze to add another layer to the intimidation. And England got lost in the fog after Jarell Quansah’s dangerous lunge earned him a straight red card, following a VAR review.
Before the Azteca could even fire up the revival, however, the effervescent Anthony Gordon, who put in his best display in an England shirt, won a penalty out of nothing, a spot-kick Harry Kane lashed home with gusto.
Breathing normally 7000 ft above sea level is hard enough, but this encounter had more twists and turns than a pretzel maker. Another VAR intervention, which spotted a foul by Kane, gave Jimenez the chance to get the hosts back in it from the spot.
Eleven minutes of added time. Not penalties, again. But with their lungs about to explode, somehow England held on.
Declan Rice leapt into the air. Bellingham dropped to his knees. The Mexican tears flowed. But, all respect to the hosts, who added to the scenes of euphoria with the most poignant It’s Coming Home booming out the stadium speakers since the anthem’s inception.
Kane and co even hurdled the barriers for Wonderwall. Winning this tournament now is more than a maybe.
from Football - The i Paper https://ift.tt/OHQdmZV
