England arrived at their Mexico City hotel this week to a reception that would have made a League Two away trip look like a homecoming parade. The team was booed—not by opposing fans, but by hotel staff and locals who apparently did not receive the memo about professional courtesy. This is what happens when you show up in someone else’s backyard expecting a warm welcome while wearing the jersey of a nation that has spent centuries showing up in other people’s backyards.
But the booing was merely the appetizer. England’s actual menu of pre-match concerns reads like a fever dream written by a paranoid football manager on his third espresso.
First, there is the lightning situation. Mexico City sits at 2,250 metres above sea level, where the sky apparently has opinions about foreign football teams. The coaching staff is now genuinely worried about electrical storms during training. They have contingency plans for contingency plans. One imagines Gareth Southgate checking the weather app every seventeen seconds, wondering if the universe is trying to tell him something.
Then came the spying allegations. Someone—and the specificity here is delicious—claimed that opposition scouts had infiltrated the stands during previous matches. Not just watching. Infiltrating. This transformed a routine scouting operation into an international incident worthy of a John le Carré novel, except the spies were probably just taking notes on a clipboard like they do at every professional match on earth.
The hotel drama, the meteorological anxiety, the phantom espionage ring—it is as if England’s World Cup preparation has become a Netflix limited series nobody asked for. At some point, you have to wonder whether the real opponent is Mexico or simply the chaos of existing in public while trying to play football.