MEXICO CITY — Mexico had an enormous home-field advantage and an opportunity to make its deepest run in the World Cup, but El Tri let it slip away against heavyweight England on Sunday night.
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Playing at altitude with the passionate backing of more than 80,000 fans at Estadio Azteca, and with a man advantage for most of the second half, Mexico scored twice but could never equalize and lost 3-2.
Mexico hadn’t conceded a goal in its first four World Cup matches but had no answer for Jude Bellingham, who scored twice in a 98-second span in the first half.
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While El Tri made a step forward from their group-stage exit in Qatar in 2022, the defeat leads a bitter taste for Mexico fans who were hoping to see their country’s first quarterfinal appearance since 1986, when it last hosted the World Cup. Mexico has been eliminated in the round of 16 eight times since then.
It was Mexico’s third competitive loss at Azteca, which opened in 1966, after a pair of 2-1 defeats in World Cup qualifiers, to Costa Rica in 2001 and to Honduras in 2013.
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