Thomas Tuchel doesn’t just want to win a World Cup knockout match on Sunday. He wants to make peace with a ghost.
The Azteca Stadium in Mexico City has not been kind to England since 1986. You know the story. Diego Maradona, two goals, one hand, one of the greatest solo runs ever. England hasn’t played there since. Now they’re back for a round-of-16 clash against Mexico, and Tuchel is leaning hard into the history.
“I just love football and the old tournaments,” Tuchel said this week. “These pictures from Mexico, they are in St George’s Park, where we stay. Big pieces of history. This is a big moment to make peace with the stadium and turn things around.”
He’s not wrong about the atmosphere. The Azteca is one of those places where the air feels different and the crowd feels like a living thing. At 2,240 meters above sea level, the ball moves differently. Players feel it in their lungs. Tuchel called the altitude a “huge advantage” for Mexico and admitted it’s unfair. But he also seemed almost giddy about the challenge.
“I remember something was hanging in the centre of the Azteca and it never moved. It was like a ball hanging and the sun was so steep the shadow was always there in the middle,” Tuchel said, remembering watching the 1986 World Cup final as a 13-year-old in Germany. “It’s an iconic stadium.”
England changed its travel plan at the last minute
The team originally planned to fly into Mexico City the day before the match. That’s standard. But after consulting with teams that have dealt with altitude before, Tuchel changed course. England will fly Friday afternoon instead, a full day earlier than originally scheduled.
“The recommendation is you either go 10 days before — which is too long for us — or last minute, which is not allowed,” Tuchel explained. “We have spoken to teams who do it and they say they travel very very late on match day if they can’t have time to adapt. Find a mixture in between. It will stay as a disadvantage.”
So here’s the plan: get there early enough to let the body adjust a little, but not so early that the team sits around thinking about breathing. It’s a gamble, and Tuchel knows it. He’s hoping the heat and humidity from earlier matches in the tournament have already conditioned his squad. “We have banked a lot of heat minutes in our body,” he said.
The ball will fly differently. Maybe five yards more on a long pass. The crowd will be loud enough to drown out instructions. Mexico, meanwhile, lives at this altitude. They train in it. They breathe it.
Tuchel shrugged when asked about the noise. “Maybe we will bring ear plugs. I expect everything.”
And then there’s the karma angle. Tuchel mentioned it more than once. He thinks the stadium owes England something after 1986. He said: “It will reward us. We will get it back. It’s karma. Karma will come back for us. We will turn it around.”
That’s either optimism or superstition or a bit of both. But for a team that hasn’t been back to this stadium in 40 years and hasn’t won a World Cup since 1966, maybe a little faith can’t hurt.
Sunday will tell.
Leave a Comment