England enter the Azteca - where football kings are crowned

Image source, BBC Sport By Daniel Austin BBC Sport senior journalist Published 6 minutes ago Among world football's great theatres, the Estadio Azteca might be the most majestic stage of all. Sat squat in the south of Mexico City, a sprawling metropolis bubbling atop a high-altitude valley surrounded by mountains, the Azteca is where the colour, noise and energy of football truly come to life, and where the game's most glorious kings have been crowned. Pele and his third World Cup win. Maradona and his goal of the century. The ultimate moments in the careers of two men lauded in every corner of the globe, both bound by the same setting - the Azteca. Now, for the first time since being eliminated from the 1986 World Cup by Maradona's Argentina, England are entering the enormous stadium again. What awaits them is utterly unique. Image source, Getty Images Image caption, The Azteca has played host to some of the most memorable matches, moments, and players in football history Built to harness the power of people "There is just something very special about Azteca," recalled Pele later in his life. "You need to be inside it, to feel it, to understand." The stadium's design plays a big part. Though the Azteca has undergone multiple refurbishments since Pele's time, and its capacity has been reduced to 87,500, the core principles of the architecture which have always made it so colossal and uproarious - its steep sides, the proximity of the stands to the pitch, the underground dressing rooms and tunnels - remain. Mexico had considered bidding to host the 1958 World Cup, but in the end didn't press ahead and allowed Sweden to win the rights. Instead, after a few years of deliberation, they set their sights on 1970 and won. The architect Pedro Ramirez Vazquez was tasked with building a venue that could welcome over 100,000 people and rival the enormous spectacle of Rio de Janeiro's Maracana, which itself had been built specially for the World Cup in Brazil in 1950. It was an immense feat of engineering, featuring a pioneering cantilevered roof with no columns, allowing for unobstructed views, and could only be constructed after 180 million kilos of rock were removed from the land below. Image source, Getty Images Image caption, The Azteca first hosted an international football tournament when it held matches at the 1968 Olympics "While I had a great passion for architecture, I had an even bigger passion for football," Ramirez Vasquez later said. "Maracana is circular, and if people are arranged in a circle while the pitch is rectangular, the long sides of the pitch - the most interesting part - are the furthest away. "The foundation of the design... was that each spectator should have, from any seat, the same quality view as everybody else. "The architecture of Azteca stills feels modern - its appearance is contemporary in every respect. "You feel enveloped. From every seat you are immersed in the game, from the front row to the very top." Image source, G