In the early hours of Sunday morning, a cacophony of firecracker explosions and brass-band music shattered the night outside England’s team hotel in Mexico City’s Santa Fe district. Dozens of Mexican supporters, summoned by social-media calls to disturb the opposition’s rest, hammered drums, sounded horns and launched fireworks into the sky — a tactic deployed days earlier against Ecuador. Police in riot gear, supported by drones and a canine unit, forcibly dispersed the crowd, but not before the scene was broadcast worldwide, capturing the cauldron awaiting England’s last-16 tie at the Azteca.

The harassment is only one front of an extraordinary security mobilisation. Mexico City authorities have deployed 7,500 officers around the stadium — roughly one for every ten fans — while a further 3,300 police guard the central Zócalo and thousands more line the 12-kilometre Paseo de la Reforma. In total, some 17,000 personnel are on duty, nearly four times the Metropolitan Police presence at the chaotic Euro 2020 final. The measures follow the deaths of four Mexican fans in a crush during celebrations after the win over Ecuador, and a formal complaint by Ecuador’s federation after their squad’s sleep was shattered by siren-blaring, firework-lobbing supporters. At least two far-left protest groups have also vowed to “ambush” England fans, citing Britain’s colonial history and its stance on Gaza.

England’s federation sought to evade such hostility by booking 14 different hotels as decoys, but the actual location leaked. The team arrived in Toluca — 2,600 metres above sea level — only on the eve of the match, minimising exposure to altitude and a hostile reception. Manager Thomas Tuchel publicly thanked Mexicans for their “warmth”, even as his bus was met with jeers and the hotel remained sealed behind barriers and a heavy cordon of National Guard, marines and federal police. A last-minute proposal by FIFA to move the kick-off forward by six hours, ostensibly due to weather, was abandoned after protests from both federations over preparation time.

The match itself is Mexico’s most significant in a generation: the co-hosts have not reached the quarter-finals since 1986, and the Azteca has not seen a World Cup defeat in ten matches. England, for all their status as fourth in the world, face a stadium at over 2,000 metres where the air is thin and the support deafening. The prize is a quarter-final date with Brazil or Norway — a high-stakes collision that, whatever the outcome, is already being played out in the streets and hotel lobbies of a football-mad capital.