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IF YOU CAN survive this, you can survive anything.
England will feel their possibilities are limitless in this World Cup after coming through an epic Azteca Stadium contest with Mexico.
The talk was that England would struggle with altitude, that the conditions in Mexico City would prove too unbearable.
On the eve of the game Thomas Tuchel even had to dismiss suggestions that Viagra was issued to his players to help remedy the effects and help with blood flow and lung capacity.
There was nothing limp or flaccid about what happened here.
Of more concern than trying to catch your breath was somehow keeping your own sanity in a place where everyone who arrived here seemed more than happy to leave theirs at home.
There was no room for decency or decorum here.
What we bore witness to was two teams embracing chaos and choosing to test each other to the very fibre of their being.
Physically, mentally, emotionally, this was a contest that shook you to your core.
How do you even sum up what happened on the pitch with any coherence when it’s hard to properly feel the tingle in your fingers typing this given the sensory overload of the Azteca?
Sweet lord above in heaven this made you feel more alive than anything you could imagine and yet tremble with the fear your heart may explode at the next blast of Mexican song.
A thunderstorm delayed kick off by an hour and then we were engulfed by a tornado of emotion inside.
Jude Bellingham scored two goals in as many first-half minutes (36 and 38) when he headed home from close range and then slid in to make it 2-0.
Ordinarily you would say this put the visitors in control and quietened the crowd. It didn’t. It angered the crowd and inspired a stunning reaction that could easily have sent Mexico in to the half-time break ahead.
They got their equaliser through one of the breakout World Cup stars, Julian Quinones, when he rifled home in the box after England failed to clear a free-kick.
Jordan Pickford already made one Gordon Banksesque save from Raul Jimenez on 15 minutes when the mayhem of this contest was still in its infancy. It was about to grow up into a monster.
A roaring, angry, beautiful monster.
Bellingham produced an equally important intervention in his own six-yard box to stop a certain Mexico goal in first-half stoppage time and Pickford flew through the thinness of the Mexico City air to scrape his fingers at a glancing Jimenez header that seemed destined for the top corner.
The England goalkeeper was immense throughout, a narrative-changing performance. He was commanding and calm, somehow the only person among 80,824 you could say that about.
There was no point catching your breath because the second half just had you by the throat. The grip was frightening and exhilarating.
Mexico squeezed and squeezed and squeezed, but England didn’t burst. Even where the air was this thin they kept enough in their lungs and their heart to persevere.
Between the 54th and 67 minutes we had a red card for Jarrel Quansah and a penalty for each side. Harry Kane rifled home his spot kick on 60 minutes with a dead-eye composure the Mexicans could only admire.
The Azteca Stadium is a curious place in the psyche of the English.
It’s one of the few areas on this earth where they are the ones who have felt wronged by something done to them.
They were the victims, the persecuted, the vanquished.
Maradona. The Hand of God. Forty years on and a complex remains about injustice that other countries throughout the globe would find hard to give much credence to. A flick through a history book is enough to dilute any level of sympathy.
They took their chance for some form of redemption. Mexico, the co-hosts, have been one of the stories to enrapture this tournament. Now England can join the party. Has their World Cup well and truly begun with this raucous, historic victory?
The hour delay to kick off due to thunderstorms around the Azteca did absolutely nothing to dull the atmosphere.
If anything, it served as a catalyst for an incessant noise that didn’t even stop after Bellingham scored those two goals.
No one was assured of anything here except being caught up in a powerful drama fuelled by the emotion of those in the stands.
This was a privilege, a stunning encapsulation of the power of football and the hold the game has over all of our senses.
Just before kick-off, the sound levels from the Mexican fans reached 149 decibels. A quick Google of the effects suggests that this is “deafeningly loud and instantly causes physical pain and permanent hearing loss without protection.”
Yep, that sounds about right.
By full-time your ears were still ringing. This didn’t feel like an assault on the senses, it was like an examination of your body’s capability to endure and overcome. This was the last World Cup game at the Azteca and the relentless noise and almost hysterical reactions from the crowd was a fizzing, blurring kind of backdrop to a game of high stakes and pressure being played out in front of us.
England’s first two goals came from positive, direct play. Declan Rice and Elliot Anderson were to the fore and Bukayo Sake, Kane and Bellingham provided the clinical edge.
It can only serve them well going to face Norway in Miami next Saturday. The drudgery of their campaign before this is no more. They will feel reborn.
Written by David Sneyd and originally published on The 42 whose award-winning team produces original content that you won’t find anywhere else: on GAA, League of Ireland, women’s sport and boxing, as well as our game-changing rugby coverage, all with an Irish eye. Subscribe here.
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