England national team

[andyh]

^^
I guess there is every chance the residents of Mexico City will stay home if they beat England and progress to the quarter finals, just because kick off is a few hours earlier.

[Dave]

Well, quite. The opportunity for a potential extra six hours of partying doesn't feel like a nailed-on fix to the problem.

[Somniloquism]

Reports this morning that both FA's were against FIFA's decision. Not stating it is the reason FIFA "backed down", but seems to kill the cheating Mexicans theory.

Edit: Surely it is only a U-Turn if a decision is made to move it officially, then they move it back. Is considering a move but not doing it a U-turn?

[Nev]

Bromsgrove Sporting started selling tickets for an outdoor fanzone which was very premature. I went to bed thinking it might happen not that it was confirmed.

[exigo]

It'll be even more chaos if there's a three hour storm delay to kick off.

[paul_e]

Reports this morning that both FA's were against FIFA's decision. Not stating it is the reason FIFA "backed down", but seems to kill the cheating Mexicans theory.

Edit: Surely it is only a U-Turn if a decision is made to move it officially, then they move it back. Is considering a move but not doing it a U-turn?

Moving the game would have also meant changing the kick off time for Norway vs Brazil (to remove the risk of an overlap if England went to extra time) so I can imagine both of those teams having something to say as well. Overall I get that the scheduling isn't great for England fans but plenty of other games have been at times that were really shit for 1 of the teams involved, it's just the nature of the event and I think they've generally done a good job of making games as accessible as possible.

[Pat McMahon]

Also, as somebody who goes to a lot of games, prioritise the fans at the ground and not the tv audience

[Dave]

I'm not upset it's stayed at 1am.

For better or worse, matches at inconvenient times is part of a World Cup in a different part of the world and it's no bad thing to remind people of that.  There'll be millions of people outside their comfort zone doing the PWS / cd shift for the first time, which I think is an important part of the whole event.

And for the kids who do stay up (and all the ones I spoke to at training this morning, are) I reckon they'll remember being up at 2am for the England game in years to come much more than the normal timed ones. The oddity of it adds to the occasion. And if they're a bit tired at school the following day, who really cares.

More selfishly, I've booked Monday off work, and had it been at 7pm I'd have felt like I couldn't justify it and would have cancelled. And I'd got used to the idea of a three day weekend.