48 Hours in Mexico City: A World Cup Diary

humankind

followed by the End of all our hopes, but yet, a renewed faith for

CDMX

SUNDAY

JULY 5TH 2026

In a city with no shortage of noise, I found the one sound worth keeping.
Not the noise of sirens or vendors but the noise of a whole country holding its breath at the same second.

I am grateful for the altitude (F.U. England), for the ache in my legs before anything even started, for friends who become family between kickoff and full time.

I count my blessings, the chants of us, the booze we share, the collective spirit.

I am grateful.

Also I am fluent in 3 languages and maybe more, warm mornings, and days that don’t deserve to be called that anymore for they turn too fast into nights.

Every game definitely felt they were over ninety minutes. Bottom line, we needed a bigger stadium.

The size of MEXICO CITY in its whole.

So that’s how my weekend went…

Protagonists: Me and Andrés, a bar called The Duke
Status: In training
Time: 5pm
Score: First pint, still goalless
High: Golden, unhurried

Juárez by five and the whole hood had turned into a waiting room for joy. The Duke wasn’t loud yet, but it was gathering itself.

The way a crowd gathers itself before it remembers it’s a crowd.

Only the Mexicans could turn hooligans into softies.

I watched grown men in jerseys hug strangers like long-lost cousins.

There is no aggression here, only a kind of devotion for the game. For the hospitality.

Looks fierce from the outside and feels like tenderness once you’re in it.

7pm, game is late but arrived dressed as an old friend.

The first pint of the day tastes like a decision.

Cold, deliberate, a little bit of an apology to my body for everything that came before it.

Protagonists: Me, Andrés, an entire country VS Colonialism
Status: Head of the competition
Time: 7pm
Score: Kickoff
High: Two anthems, one crowd, cracked voices already

Kickoff. Respect paid to the anthems, twice, because some things deserve repetition. I stood on my tiptoes for the whole thing, like the extra two inches might get me closer to whatever this was.

15’24 — the ball moved through transversal lines like it had somewhere urgent to be.

35′. 37′. Goals, both of them, quick, unfair, glorious.

41′ — Sí se puede, sung by everyone who has ever needed to believe it.

60′ — a penalty for them.

68′ — a penalty for us.

The scoreline stopped mattering the way scorelines do when you’re inside the noise instead of watching it.

Protagonists: Me and Andrés, a phone running out of battery
Status: Being judged as we speak
Time: 10:55pm
High: Instagram stories, stained glass, low-grade corruption in the group chat

10:55, and Andrés is posting things I’ll be tagged in tomorrow whether I like it or not.

Corruption, he calls it, laughing, some stained glass.

The whole aesthetic of our serendipitous friendship.

Was it a good idea to go to an English pub in Mexico City to watch the game?

It wasn’t.

None of the good ideas tonight belonged to us.

My head on Andrés’s shoulder.

Not because I was tired.

Because some nights ask for that kind of punctuation.

Andrés leaves.

11:09 (morning? PM?) — there are days in my life where there is too much poetry happening at once to write any of it down properly.

Bad Bunny in the background.

People dancing like the outcome of the match had personally bled them.

Everyone screaming México like it was a spell that needed repeating.

Y SI SI should have worked.

CDMX

Monday

JULY 6th 2026

8am
Zona Rosa

Some Strip club

Girls twerking, unbothered, uncredited, unforgettable.

I go back to the studio.

There are afternoons that write themselves without you.

By 3pm, Centro asked for a siesta and I gave it one.

Protagonists: Me, Maria Artista, the whole Zócalo
Status: Judged, gladly
Time: 6:30pm
High: Fan zone, communal, unfinished business

6:30pm and the Zócalo turned into the metaphor nobody asked for but everybody needed — the guests: the US. Loud and certain, and the discreet Belgium that turned out to be the real party all along, quiet until it wasn’t.

I spent the whole match on my tiptoes again.

Mixed-culture couples everywhere, a Leeds Uni scarf next to a British ex I recognized from three conversations ago, minute-by-minute updates read aloud in Spanish to whoever would listen.

Quiero llorar, someone said, and meant it, and nobody judged them for it.

Quiero volver, even if Mexico is gone.

A baby was born somewhere in the city during all of this, unrelated and somehow not.

A Mexican girl called Arlette showed up right when the story needed her to.

And Belgium killed the cheaters — 4-1.

Protagonists: Me, B and a lot more people
Status: Not even warmed up
Time: Late on the Zócalo
Score: 4-1, USA is out
High: On way Zona Rosa (AGAIN), dim lights, disbelief

I had a loud start to the day because the day hadn’t decided to start yet.

Zona Rosa at eight in the morning was its own kind of liturgy.

Neon doing the work the sun refuses to do.

B laughing at something only he found funny yet.

I have my own little rhythm, my own rules about when a night ends and a morning begins, and today they refused to answer me.

On strangers I rely, and newly found B, and nothing more.

By nine we were walking it off.

Ven — a word, a friend, a direction, I wasn’t sure which anymore.

And we did not find relief for our sorrow in the large breasts we just saw.

Sleep as a strategic move. Sleep as a truce.

Protagonists: Me, a table of sleepy Englishmen, Claudio somewhere on the other end of a phone line
Status: Still committed
Time: The day after I met B
High: An artist studio, louder out of laughter than Gin Gin

Back at it and the English contingent had surrendered to the night, heads up around the table like a renaissance painting in every shot.

I called Claudio because some names come back to you at exactly the hour they’re needed, whether or not the story has anything to do with them.

He does not answer.

So then I fall for the British colonized.

12:39 — him. Him. Just that. Some things don’t need a sentence.

1:39. 1:45 — someone started singing “Hey Jude” in a bar that hadn’t asked for it and didn’t want it to stop.

Protagonists: Me, B, the ghost of every Viking who ever lost a fight
Status: Not so sure
Time: 2:03am
High: Sobering, slightly delirious

2:03 and he pointed out that the Haaland-looking dude at the bar was probably the last thing most of their ancestors saw before dying during the Viking invasions. Generational trauma, delivered as a punchline, landing somewhere much deeper.

2:23 — we were playing again, he said. Twelve of them.

— You mean eleven?

Someone corrected.

— No — the referee, he said, from Calke Abbey, self-appointed, entirely unqualified, completely necessary.

2:42 — my voice, officially, completely, gone. Fair enough.

Protagonists: Me and the long walk home
Status: Gold medal, breaking world record
Time: 4:07am and two days later
High: Insurgentes, slick and quiet

4:07, Insurgentes in San Miguel de Allende, stretched out like it had all the time in the world, which, at that hour, it did. The night with B… was too late like the game, softer, a different register entirely — the kind of hours that don’t ask to be performed for anyone.

Protagonists: Me, tomorrow, an unbroken curse
Status: Done, for now
Time: Mañana

Almost Bastille Day

High: Kite

Going to the Anthropology Museum tomorrow, to make sure the artefacts are still protected — someone has to check, after a week like this one.

Break the curse of the hands of gods.

Bellingham, somewhere out there, still owes us that.

Each and every hour spoke of something solar — the anthem sung twice, the goals that came too fast to count properly, a voice lost somewhere between the fortieth minute and four in the morning, a shoulder to rest a head on, and love always, in all its weird, loud, ninety-plus-minutes manifestations.

Il y a des “vamos México” qui se perdent dans la gorge de ceux qui ont trop crié.

Protagonists: Me, the cat and the kitchen counter
Status: Daddy issues
Time: So tangible
High: On Hasch

the walk everyone recognizes and nobody names out loud.

And Belgium is out on Friday the 10th.

So here comes the end of my World Cup Chronicles.

For the Semi and the Finale feel rigged to me.

What would Renaud, my father, say?

That the sound of boots has shifted and that football isn’t what it used to be.

And if France wins —
It is…
The spirit of the migrants
Some players who are a bit broken
The golden generation of Belgium
Racism peaked
The lack of hospitality
Cheating ostentatiously.

So with his long hands he would have voiced a song on the keys.

It would go like this, in the style of Lennon:

This cup will be won by the losers.

Victoire, here are the true winners :

Cabo Verde
Belgium
Iran
Mexico
and all those who played a real game.

For once, I think Germany got away with it by leaving early.

But revenge is a bitter pill to swallow.

Let’s keep the love of the people manifest, pure and naive, between kicks, between punches.

Red cars, and defeats.

Thank you, Dad, for the passion
It wasn’t the same without you
You were in every play,
I saw your arms lift up in the air,
Your feet tapping,
Your eyes shining,
And your whole soul leaping with mine.