Hiding an entire national team in a World Cup host city sounds simple until you realize how many people want to know where you're sleeping. England apparently went to serious lengths ahead of their match against Mexico, booking a reported 15 different hotels around the city as decoys. It didn't matter. Mexico fans zeroed in on the actual building and turned the block into a fireworks show overnight.
Fans gathered near a bridge by the hotel towers, setting off fireworks into the night sky.
That's not a small crowd making noise for fun on a random Tuesday. That's a coordinated, tournament-sized statement — the kind of thing you only see when a fanbase decides they're not letting the away team sleep easy. Mexico's supporters have a well-earned reputation for showing up loud at World Cups, and camping outside the opponent's actual hotel despite a 15-hotel smokescreen is next-level recon.
An aerial angle showing fireworks streaking up toward the hotel tower's glass facade from the street below.
Whether or not any of England's players actually lost sleep over it, the optics are brutal for a federation that clearly tried hard to avoid exactly this scenario. You don't book over a dozen decoy hotels unless you're genuinely worried about this kind of ambush, and the fact that it happened anyway makes the whole exercise look pointless in hindsight. Mexico hasn't even kicked a ball yet and they're already winning the pregame.