England boss Tuchel focused on calm at eye of the World Cup storm

Thomas Tuchel says his players cannot lose their heads as England look to overcome background noise and the challenge of playing at altitude against World Cup co-hosts Mexico.

>Having topped Group L and survived an almighty scare in their knockout opener against the Democratic Republic of Congo, attention turns to the Estadio Azteca for Sunday’s mouth-watering last-16 tie.

>All manner of obstacles stand in England’s way of progress to the quarter-finals, with the fact they cannot get acclimatized to the game taking place 2,200 metres above sea level a major hurdle.

>Mexico will be roared on at a ground where they have only lost two of 89 competitive matches, plus there is talk of potential overnight hostility at the team hotel following kick-off confusion on Friday.

>“Like so often, it is so much noise,” said England boss Tuchel, who touched down in Mexico City to find out the game would not be moving forward six hours as discussed.

>“When you are inside of the bubble, it is actually quite calm, quite focused.

>“And the bigger the noises, the bigger the stages, the bigger the noises, the calmer the preparation.

>“I think the players were not even aware of a possible change of kick-offs and just this example shows you to not lose your heads. We cannot influence it.

>“Three-and-a-half hours later, you land in Mexico and the kick-off time stayed the same. It is just not worth losing our heads.”

>He continued: “Altitude: it is what it is. Home crowd: it is what it is. It is not in our favour.

>“We need to overcome obstacles, but we have the spirit, we have the commitment, the pure will and the glue between the team to overcome these things.

>“That’s why I am positive. We know what’s coming. The players will feel it, we will all feel it tomorrow when the energy is on.

>“But that’s also the beauty of it. We focus completely on what is possible to be influenced by us.”

>Tuchel downplayed talk of hostility and did not want to get into the potential of Mexican fans making for a sleepless night at their hotel like Ecuador experienced in the previous round.

>The England boss believes FIFA “took care of the situation” and did “not want to talk about problems that don’t exist yet”, although he was more forthcoming about the altitude.

>Tuchel laughed off suggestions Viagra might be used to mitigate the effects – “the information and the support didn’t reach me, so that is not true,” he said – but acknowledged the impact.

>“You know what, we feel it,” he said. “We feel it even if we don’t train. I felt, for example, a slight headache in the hotel room through the day.

>“Didn’t sleep as well as the days before but nothing that you cannot handle and cannot adapt (to).

>“I think the players felt it in the first minutes of the training session and the longer it went, they could cope with it better. It is just what it is. We cannot physically adapt.

>“It is just impossible but we are here one day before to experience it at least, to not have all the first-time experience tomorrow in (the) warm-up.

>“We will have tomorrow’s warm-up, especially with the flight of the ball, with a bit of shortness of breath.

>“I think it is not a coincidence that Mexico starts their matches normally at home very strong, very front-footed, very aggressively because I think the first 15-20 minutes will be maybe the toughest for us.

>“Once we overcome that and we experienced it a little bit already today, I think we are in a good place.”