The Sports Guru
England's last-16 tie against Mexico had not kicked off yet, and it had already produced its first crisis. This covers the five-and-a-half hours on Friday when FIFA came close to moving the fixture forward six hours over a storm forecast at the Azteca, the anger from the English and Mexican federations, the late U-turn, and the reasons the kick-off ended up exactly where it started, at 01:00 BST on Monday. Also here: what the weather is now expected to do, and what the altitude experts make of an argument that briefly threatened to change the whole shape of England's tournament.
England's World Cup last-16 tie against Mexico kicks off at 18:00 local time on Sunday, which is 01:00 BST on Monday, live on BBC One and iPlayer. That single sentence took five and a half hours of uncertainty, anger and reversal to become true again on Friday, because for most of an evening it looked as though it would not be. FIFA came within touching distance of moving one of the tournament's biggest fixtures forward by six hours, then pulled back from it, and left both national associations furious and everyone else guessing. The kick-off time did not change. Almost everything around it did.
For England fans, the practical outcome is the one they started with: a very late night, or an early alarm, to watch their side face the co-hosts in Mexico City. As we noted in the build-up to this tie, England were already braced for noise and thin air. They can now add administrative chaos to the list of things arriving before kick-off.
18:30 BST: the story breaks
The drama began, as these things increasingly do, on social media. England's squad was finishing an open training session in Kansas when the first reports surfaced from Mexican journalists that FIFA was considering bringing the kick-off forward six hours. Andres Vaca of radio station TUDN broke the story, and bewilderment followed almost immediately, not least because the people it most concerned appeared to know nothing about it. The Football Association, according to the BBC, was unaware of any potential schedule change when its journalists began asking questions.
The stated reason was the weather. Sources said FIFA was worried about storms forecast around the Azteca at the original kick-off time, specifically the risk of lightning and flooding. There was a second, grimmer question hanging over the discussion too: whether the celebrations in Mexico City that followed the co-hosts' last-32 win over Ecuador, which the BBC reports left four people dead, were also part of FIFA's concern. On that, the BBC's own account is honest: it was hard to tell.
20:00 BST: anger behind the scenes
It was around 20:00 BST before the FA was formally told that FIFA did intend to alter the kick-off time. The association asked for more time to understand the reasoning, and that was where the evening turned from confusion into conflict. Both the English and Mexican governing bodies were angry that a change of this magnitude was being proposed less than 48 hours before kick-off, and the objections were not abstract. They raised the impact on fan travel, the logistics of restaging an event this size at short notice, and the effect on both teams' preparations.
England's players, meanwhile, were fronting up in Kansas City with no idea when they would be playing. Morgan Rogers and Marcus Rashford, clearly briefed, gave the sort of unbothered answers footballers are trained to give, insisting any change would not affect them. At around 21:30 BST, England boarded their chartered flight to Mexico City still not knowing when the match would be. In Mexico City, the co-hosts' manager Javier Aguirre was rather less diplomatic, calling the proposed change a "kick in the gut". Reports in Mexico even claimed the BBC was part of the lobbying around the switch, a suggestion a BBC spokesperson flatly denied, saying the corporation was "not involved in these discussions".
22:00 BST: the U-turn
Extreme weather has been a genuine concern all tournament. At last year's Club World Cup in the United States, six of 63 matches were hit by major weather delays, so FIFA's instinct to minimise disruption was not invented out of nothing. But just as the evening seemed to be settling into a wait for confirmation, Mexican media began reporting that FIFA was now considering a U-turn. The combined weight of two furious federations and a pile of logistical problems appeared to have tipped the balance back. Mexican journalist Gibran Araige posted that FIFA was "backing down on the schedule change" and that "everything points to the match staying at 6pm", with both federations annoyed.
Sources close to the England camp told the BBC that lengthy discussions between all parties were continuing behind the scenes in an effort to talk FIFA out of the move. Just before midnight BST, they got their answer: the kick-off would remain exactly as originally planned. Five and a half hours after the first report, everyone was back where they had started, only crosser and more tired.
Why the kick-off stayed put
The reversal, the BBC reports, came down to more than the shouting. One decisive issue was the risk of fans simply missing the game. The England Supporters' Travel Club had been given an allocation of 3,000 tickets, which sold out at the ballot stage back in December, and much depended on when those supporters planned to reach Mexico City. With an 18:00 local kick-off, fans could still fly in on Sunday morning. Two flights from Atlanta land in Mexico City on the day of the game, at 09:55 and 11:55, and had the match been shifted to 12:00 local, anyone on those planes would have arrived to find their tickets useless. There was also the small matter of the Brazil-Norway tie scheduled for 21:00 BST on Sunday, which would have had to be pushed back to avoid an overlap. Move one fixture at a World Cup and you tend to move several.
The one certainty in all of it is that England supporters in the UK are back to the overnight shift. A 01:00 BST kick-off on Monday means the same late night or set alarm they had braced for from the start, delivered after a day in which it briefly looked like being taken away and handed back.
What the weather and the altitude actually mean
The forecast that started the panic has not gone away. The BBC's lead weather presenter Ben Rich notes that daily thunderstorms are normal in Mexico City at this time of year, but that Sunday's risk looks particularly high, with storms that could turn severe, bringing frequent lightning and the possibility of hail. Mexican government forecasters expect small low-pressure troughs to leave the atmosphere very unstable, and that instability tends to peak in the late afternoon and into the evening, which is exactly when the match will now be played. Moving the kick-off earlier could have beaten the worst of it, though Rich is careful to say that was never guaranteed. Temperatures would have peaked around 23C at the midday slot, several degrees warmer than the evening kick-off that survived.
Then there is the altitude, the concern that predates all of this. Dr Barney Wainwright, senior research fellow at Leeds Beckett University, told the BBC that maximum aerobic capacity at Mexico City's elevation typically drops around 10%, "and that has a knock-on to performance". A warmer, earlier kick-off, he explained, could have compounded it: "If it is warmer, the heat can have a double whammy effect with altitude. When there's less oxygen in the air, that means there's less in the blood." He added that thinner air takes oxygen away from the brain too, which matters for "decision making, visual processing, those kind of things", the unglamorous machinery of playing football well.
His overall verdict, though, offers England a crumb of comfort in the mess. Kicking off at midday rather than in the evening, Wainwright said, "won't make any real difference to them" from an altitude perspective, and the later slot at least avoids wrecking the players' rest patterns in a place where altitude already disrupts sleep. There is even an unlikely upside buried in the storm forecast: if thunderstorms force stoppages during the evening, those breaks could hand England a rest from the effects of the altitude that Mexico, acclimatised and at home, will not need. It is a small mercy salvaged from a badly run day, and nobody who lived through it will want to sit through another like it.
Frequently Asked Questions
England play Mexico in their World Cup last-16 tie at the Azteca in Mexico City at 18:00 local time on Sunday, which is 01:00 BST on Monday for UK viewers. The match is live on BBC One and iPlayer. The time was confirmed as staying the same after FIFA considered, then abandoned, a plan to bring it forward six hours.
According to the BBC, FIFA considered bringing the kick-off forward six hours because of storms forecast around the Azteca at the original time, with concern over lightning and flooding. There was also a question, which the BBC said was hard to confirm, over whether celebrations following Mexico's last-32 win that left four people dead were part of the concern.
Several reasons. Both the English and Mexican federations were angry at a change proposed within 48 hours of kick-off. Moving the match to midday could have stranded fans on Sunday morning flights from Atlanta landing at 09:55 and 11:55, and the England Supporters' Travel Club held 3,000 tickets sold out since December. FIFA would also have had to push back the Brazil-Norway tie to avoid an overlap.
The BBC's lead weather presenter Ben Rich says Sunday's thunderstorm risk in Mexico City is particularly high, with storms that could turn severe, bringing frequent lightning and possible hail. Thunderstorm activity tends to peak in the late afternoon and evening, when the match will be played. Temperatures are expected to peak around 23C.
Not significantly, according to Dr Barney Wainwright of Leeds Beckett University, who told the BBC that maximum aerobic capacity drops around 10% at Mexico City's altitude but that a midday kick-off "won't make any real difference to them" on that front. The later slot avoids disrupting the players' rest, and any thunderstorm stoppages could even give England a break from the altitude's effects.
Sources: The five-and-a-half-hour timeline (the 18:30, 20:00, 21:30, 22:00 and pre-midnight BST beats), the proposed six-hour move and the storm/lightning/flooding rationale, Andres Vaca and Gibran Araige's reporting, the FA and Mexican federation objections and the under-48-hours grievance, the Morgan Rogers and Marcus Rashford media answers, Javier Aguirre's "kick in the gut" line, the BBC's "not involved in these discussions" statement, the four deaths reported after Mexico's last-32 celebrations, the England Supporters' Travel Club 3,000-ticket allocation and Atlanta flight times, the Brazil-Norway scheduling clash, the Club World Cup weather-delay figure, Ben Rich's forecast, and Dr Barney Wainwright's altitude analysis, as reported by Dale Johnson and Andy Cryer for BBC Sport.
