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‘Best host in the world’: Mexico keep spirits up after England heartbreak

<p>Despite ‘a setback that will hurt for eternity’, the co-hosts exit with heads held high after bringing pride, passion and soul</p><p>On Monday music pulsated from some of the bars on Calle Genova, a narrow thoroughfare in Mexico City’s heart that rarely lives in silence. The clock was yet to strike 11am, but, spilling out on to the street, a healthy crowd of patrons were picking up where they had left off. Perhaps they had never stopped at all. National team shirts were on full display and, had anyone lived under a news blackout for 15 hours, they may have drawn a wildly different conclusion about the previous night’s events.</p><p>The truth was more evident to anyone who, upon returning from Estadio Azteca, made a beeline for Paseo de la Reforma. Long after <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/jul/01/mexico-ecuador-world-cup-2026-last-32-match-report">Mexico’s last-16 victory over Ecuador</a> this vast boulevard had been teeming, an affirmative national moment bringing 1.4 million people on to the streets. But it was virtually empty three and a half hours after <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/jul/06/england-mexico-match-report-jude-bellingham-harry-kane-world-cup">England had shattered the dreams of </a><em><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/jul/06/england-mexico-match-report-jude-bellingham-harry-kane-world-cup">El Tri</a></em>, the clean-up operation from the evening’s mass screening already in full swing and remaining revellers confined to the sidestreets.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/jul/06/mexico-world-cup-exit-england-reaction-fans">Continue reading...</a>