Mexico awakes to the morning after

I woke on Monday morning unsure if I’d slept, not entirely convinced I was alive. Time had passed unaccounted for, but my ears were still ringing, the earth still shaking, as wired and exhausted and confused as at any point the previous night. Mexico City has a permanent hallucinatory quality, always simultaneously rising and falling, but over the past month it has become even more like itself. And as I wandered in search of breakfast, in search of anything to stop the spinning, I found a city spiritually and actually hungover, mourning yet content, coming to terms with the night of its life. 

Still dazed, I almost walked into a newsstand, where the first headline, from Ovaciones, read “Canta y no llores”: “Sing and don’t cry”. Others were more pessimistic: El Universal’s “A painful farewell,” El Heraldo De Mexico: “The end…”. Cronica and La Jornada had the same thought: “Goodbye to the dream,” and “The end of the dream.” La Prensa simply read: “They gave everything.”

This is the overwhelming feeling in Mexico: that you can never regret giving everything, that no-one involved could have done more or made this more, that at points the chaos escaped the bounds of sport and became a lottery. Someone will already be considering a book on this match, on the past month of Mexican football. People kept stopping to congratulate me in the street, to shake my hand as though it was me and Dan Burn heading balls back across the halfway line as England’s tallest-ever defensive pairing, a nice reminder that I’ll always be identifiable as British from 100 paces. Visiting fans have been first baffled, then awed, by how welcoming and gracious the locals have been - even in the hour’s delay pre-match, as I searched the Azteca concourse for whatever food someone was willing to sell me that could beat Fifa’s woeful offering (which for a while amounted to non-specific “salty snacks”), Brits and Mexicans met and mingled as though in any bar anywhere in the world, as though they had nothing else on their mind.

And yes, the Guardia Nacional lined every street like shrubbery with handguns, but there seemed little need for them. The obvious concern was where the fizzing, surging Mexican energy would go at full-time, whether it would curdle, but it just melted into the night sky, replaced by joy and unity, everyone dancing together to Billy Rae Cyrus in the Azteca’s long shadow. England fans talk of a religious experience, one that fundamentally changed their perception of reality and humanity, partly rooted in flat stereotypes of Mexico as mean and violent, but also because they could not imagine doing the same, being able to balance so many conflicting feelings. Had this been hosted at Wembley, had Mexico shattered English hearts like that, does anyone believe it would have looked remotely similar?

“It couldn’t have happened anywhere else [but the Azteca],” wrote AS Mexico, and it is hard to disagree. Trying to imagine a club game here simply doesn’t compute, as though it should lie empty for years on end waiting for an occasion to match its unique majesty. It should obviously be hosting the final, in a city that can cost whatever you want it to cost, a city built on football as much as music or art or food. In a world where most things seem to disappoint in some way, here is a place that will expand your conception of the world and the possible.

When everything else finally subsides, my defining memories might be two songs. Not long after the delay was announced, with the stadium already two-thirds full with two hours until kick-off, this recognisably Mexican guitar kicked in, tinny strumming, and a breathy ballad began. It transpires that Hasta Que Te Conoci (Until I Met You) lasts a little under nine-and-a-half minutes but could have been playing anywhere between 30 seconds and an hour, so engrossing and massive a spectacle it became, 50,000 or so screaming every word. It built into this swirling, swinging big band anthem, desperate yet euphoric, these piercing horns pushing and pulling. For all I had seen and heard it, this was the first time I felt the Azteca, understood it. Don’t Look Back In Anger followed and was booed throughout as though announcing the place had run out of beer. 

And then on the final whistle, Three Lions kicked in, serving a similar purpose to Non, Je ne regrette rien in Inception, attempting to pull you from the dream, to pierce the spell. It was so surreal as to be farcical, so deeply inappropriate for an occasion this grand and gargantuan, and yet also the only option. England are not supposed to get these moments. That’s the point of the song. Dreams are supposed to remain dreams. You’re not supposed to wake up.