Reading all the morning-after stories, it appears that football experts are concerned England does not know how to run up a hill.
And that Thomas Tuchel’s resilient team will be exhausted before the ball is even kicked off in a Round of 16 World Cup match vs Mexico inside Estadio Azteca on Sunday.
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There’s a way to win in Mexico
Heck, even the normally resolute Tuchel sounds skittish in just discussing a quick up-and-back trip to what’s temporarily known as Mexico City Stadium.
“The altitude will be a big disadvantage,” said Tuchel, after Harry Kane saved England’s butt with two second-half goals in a tense 2-1 victory over DR Congo on Wednesday.
No one disputes that Mexico will have a homefield advantage vs the Three Lions inside a recently revamped 80,824-capacity stadium that opened in 1966.
Throw in the fact that storied Azteca stands 7,220ft above sea level and Mexico has 70 victories in 89 games on its home turf, and winning in the Round of 16 will feel like making the World Cup Final for Jude Bellingham, Jordan Pickford and routinely nervous England supporters.
But I covered a Monday Night Fooball game at Azteca between the Houston Texans and Oakland Raiders in 2016 and both teams survived just fine.
The only bad parts were trying to split the masses while hurrying to a post-game press conference on deadline, then slowly getting back into the heart of the city around midnight.
Yet some of the morning-after headlines pouring out of England are also a little … embarrassing.
USMNT star says Mexico is ‘average’
Lions aren’t cowardly, so I’d never use that term.
But acting like you can’t breathe inside Azteca is laughable, especially considering that the richest sports league in the world is returning to Estadio Azteca in November when the San Francisco 49ers face the Minnesota Vikings.
“Because they’re (Mexico) playing in altitude, they look faster than everybody,” former USMNT and Premier League goalkeeper Brad Friedel said on The Rest Is Football.
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“They are an average team. Below average, actually.
“They are so beatable and their fans get on them. I don’t care if they play a low block, a high block, anything. … Just get through the first 15 to 20 minutes and they (England) will win the game.”
Increased heat will obviously be a factor, but England’s best spend all year training to compete for 90-plus minutes at full intensity.
All Tuchel, Kane and Bellingham have to do is look to the NFL and NBA for inspiration.
NFL teams regularly win one mile above ocean
The Denver Nuggets’ Ball Arena sits 5,280ft above sea level, which is one mile above the ground.
Yet opposing NBA teams spend half of the year running all over the court in Denver, while some of the greatest athletes in the world don’t enter games in November and April whining about the unbeatable altitude.
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Then there’s Patrick Mahomes and his Kansas City Chiefs.
Mahomes built a modern NFL dynasty in a small market, partly by dominating Denver annually.
Empower Field at Mile High, the Broncos’ home venue, also sits 5,280ft above sea level.
NFL offensive lineman weighing more than 300 pounds fiercely battle for hours one mile higher than the ground, and they take the same fly-in, fly-out approach that England will soon use vs Mexico.
From 2016-22, Mahomes’ Chiefs won seven consecutive road games vs the Broncos in Denver’s elevated air.
England must adjust mentally to altitude
“We will not be ready because you cannot be ready in terms of adaptation,” Tuchel told eSPORTY.
“The body cannot adapt in three days’ time, it’s just impossible.
“We need 12 days’ time, 14 days’ time. We don’t have it, so it is a big disadvantage, of course.”
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Is he trying to win or lose in the World Cup? It’s hard to tell with that fear.
This is what Tuchel should be preaching to his Three Lions, in between shouting at Djed Spence and privately wondering if there’s still a way to sneak Cole Palmer into a packed Estadio Azteca.
What’s more important: Altitude or attitude?
If England truly wants to reach the World Cup quarterfinals and end this Mexico myth, the No. 4-ranked team on the planet needs to suck it up and learn how to mentally thrive in the thin air.
