{"id":780332,"date":"2026-07-05T09:56:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-05T09:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/780332\/"},"modified":"2026-07-05T09:56:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-05T09:56:08","slug":"mexico-vs-england-why-the-azteca-is-a-legendary-world-cup-stadium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/780332\/","title":{"rendered":"Mexico vs England: Why the Azteca is a legendary World Cup stadium"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The power of the people is what makes the Azteca truly special. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Whether cheering on Mexico, home club sides Club America or Cruz Azul, or hosting neutral sides in the World Cup, the Azteca crowd is renowned for generating a ferocious soundtrack like nowhere else.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It is next to impossible to communicate on the pitch because the Azteca is full of sound swirling all around you&#8221;, says Jason de Vos, one of the few men to have both played and coached against Mexico at the stadium, doing so with the Canadian national team.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;The Mexicans know they have an advantage because of the crowd and they try to swarm you on the pitch too.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;When you arrive the team bus drives under the stadium, down a ramp and then you walk to the dressing room.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;When you walk to the pitch you have to go through a very tight tunnel and you can hear a buzzing sound, like a swarm of bees.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;To get outside, you approach the pitch from below, going up a staircase, and when you crest the top and see the light, you realise that the buzzing is the people. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It&#8217;s the vibration of the horns, the screaming, the jumping. It&#8217;s crazy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;But that&#8217;s exactly why you want to play football.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The power of the people is what makes the Azteca truly special. Whether cheering on Mexico, home club&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":780333,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-780332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=780332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780332\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/780333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=780332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=780332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=780332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}