You have to love the effort here. Somewhere in England's camp, someone drew up a decoy plan straight out of a heist movie: book over a dozen hotels, scatter the paper trail, keep the actual team location a mystery. Fifteen hotels. That's not caution, that's paranoia dialed to 11. And it still didn't work.
Fireworks lighting up the sky outside the actual hotel, with fans gathered on the sidewalk filming the whole thing.
Mexico fans found the real spot anyway and turned the block into a party England definitely did not RSVP to. Fireworks going off into the night sky, crowds camped out watching and filming, noise blasting for hours. Recognizable hotel signage in the background pretty much confirms it: the disguise didn't hold.
An aerial look at the scene from the nearby pedestrian bridge, packed with fans as flares streak through the smoke.
It wasn't just the sidewalk outside the lobby doors, either. A nearby pedestrian bridge turned into its own staging ground, with crowds massing and flares lighting up the smoke-filled air above the crossing. Whatever sleep England's players were hoping to bank before kickoff, Mexico's fanbase had other plans, and honestly, this is the kind of pregame theater that makes World Cup buildup hit different than anything else in sports.