Thomas Tuchel woke with a headache on Saturday morning. The altitude in Mexico City, he admitted, had got to him. But as the England manager faced a packed press conference on the eve of the biggest match of his Three Lions tenure, he was treating every question with the same infectious, childlike effervescence – whether it was about the thin air, the rumours of viagra use to combat it, or the ghost of Diego Maradona’s Hand of God.
“That is not true,” he said, laughing, when asked about the altitude-sickness remedy. On 1986, he insisted his players were “not out for revenge”. Instead, all the German wanted was respect. “We are respectful of everyone and then we expect to be treated with respect,” he said, addressing the 80% Mexican crowd expected at the Azteca Stadium.
“Thomas Tuchel jokes about altitude sickness as England face Mexico in hostile World Cup last-16 at Azteca.”
Alan Shearer, the former England captain, believes the players will not be fazed. “All the talk stops when they run out anyway,” he wrote. “If they play the game rather than the occasion, I think they will win.” Shearer, who will be co-commentating with Guy Mowbray, recalled watching the 1986 World Cup as a teenager and said this match – a last-16 tie with a place in the quarter-finals at stake – was the kind of game “you dream of as a boy”.
Kyle Walker, the experienced defender, knows all about hostile environments. “One that stands out for me has got to be Liverpool at Anfield, that Champions League night … flares coming at the bus,” he wrote in a column. “The hair stands up on the back of my arms, even when I talk about it now, because they’re the games that you want to play in.” He acknowledged the challenge – altitude, home advantage, hostile crowd – but said: “First and foremost we are the better team. Let’s allow our football to do the talking.”
England have had to contend with more than just altitude. The confusion over the kick-off time, which was changed and then brought forward, added to the noise. Shearer called it “a silly idea” for the thousands of fans flying in. Ecuador, who played Mexico in the round of 32, were kept awake by car horns and fireworks. Shearer predicted similar disruption for England, maybe an alarm going off at their hotel. “You have to accept it and get on with it,” he said.
Tuchel, meanwhile, will rely on his players’ focus. “I don’t want to talk about problems that don’t exist… if they come, we will accept them,” he said. An injury scare in training, reported by the Daily Mail, added to the tension, but the German kept his final session away from prying eyes – aside from a few rock climbers, the paper noted.
Sunday’s match at the Azteca, a 6pm kick-off, will be the grandest occasion the stadium has seen in 40 years. England have not played there since losing that epic quarter-final to Argentina in 1986. For Tuchel, who watched West Germany lose the final there as a 12-year-old in Krumbach, it is a chance to be on the right side of history. “It’s a demanding tournament in itself,” he said. “The best way to approach it is to be relaxed.”