It’s a warm June afternoon in 2009. The teams look uneven. At 30, I am the second-oldest player in our lineup. Lloyd, Nathan and Ben are early 20s – they can all play. Micky the German isn’t in top condition, and at 34 is past his peak. But at a conservative estimate every member of the opposition has two more decades in their legs. A couple of them might be pushing 70. We’re in kit. They are in jeans. We have trainers. They’re in boots – working boots, not “cleats”. And yet after an hour we have been beaten to a pulp. The final score evades my memory, but it might be the only six-a-side I’ve ever played in where “next goal wins” wasn’t a vaguely justifiable way to end things.How had this team of old men beaten us? A word you may have heard more often than usual in the last three days: altitude. In a village somewhere near Lake Titicaca, just shy of 4,000m above sea level, a motley selection of Bolivian farmers had toyed with us. As someone who lets the ball do the work, even a five-yard burst left me breathless. It was not a neutral venue.But knowing the Guardian readership, you’ve all done the Inca trail. Some of you are probably reading this halfway up a sponsored Kilimanjaro trek. You all know there aren’t enough coca leaves in Peru to help you acclimatise to the Azteca in two days.Experts suggest that for England to get used to playing in these conditions they either needed to have arrived there at half-time in their opening group game, or to have landed a minute before kick-off and got changed on the touchline – hoodwinking the body for just long enough to win in normal time before altitude sickness kicks in halfway through extra time, and players start acting strangely out of character. Jordan Pickford pointing at his temples and yelling at everything around him. Hang on, I said out of character. You get the idea.The Azteca is around 2,200m above sea level – which means Dan Burn will be 2,202 metres above sea level. Presumably the Mexican hotel will give him a toddler single bed, legs poking out of the open window as the home fans’ car horns beep all night. We saw what happened to the Ecuador lads. How noise cancelling can noise-cancelling headphones get? How many decoy hotels do England need to get a good night’s sleep?On the Guardian’s World Cup Daily podcast Dan Bardell suggested getting the cast of Dear England in to play the dummy squad – put them in the official hotel, and smuggle Harry Kane and co in a laundry basket to a backpackers’ hostel down the road. At least split them up so a few of our boys get their eight hours.This might just be getting our excuses in early, but there seems to be a growing realisation that playing Mexico in Mexico City will be incredibly difficult, that the Mexican team looks better than us, that despite having lots of good players England have all manner of issues. Suddenly expectations at a major tournament appear uncharacteristically realistic.One of the big advantages of being in LA right now is not hearing the 24/7 panic that will have ensued after the Democratic Republic of the Congo game about England’s troublesome right-back position. But, wherever you are, you can’t get away from people who don’t regularly watch the game (and quite often those that do) giving categoric, incorrect tactical insights.If altitude sickness kicks in, Jordan Pickford may be seen pointing at his temples and yelling at everything around him. Photograph: Bernadett Szabó/ReutersDjed Spence did not play well on Wednesday. But he was not at fault for the DRC goal. He is dragged across because no one else is covering Noah Sadiki running through the middle. The ball looks to be intended for Sadiki anyway. It would have been insane for Spence to ignore that run. Either Noni Madueke has to sprint to get to Brian Cipenga or a midfielder, presumably Elliot Anderson, goes with Sadiki. There is no pressure on the ball when Chancel Mbemba plays it either. There is a structural problem across the entire midfield and defence – one which has been exposed already, and will almost certainly be exposed again.It would be a wild decision to start Rice at full-back. I can’t face hearing someone yelling “square pegs in round holes” on co-comms. If all the other right-backs are injured, then is John Stones starting centre-back against a Mexican onslaught a bigger risk than keeping the Marc Guéhi-Ezri Konsa partnership in the middle and having Spence on the right? If Rice is fit, then the spine stays the same. Anderson has been quietly good so far. So really it’s only the wingers who can swap in and out.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIt is very simple to say Madueke and Marcus Rashford bad, Bukayo Saka and Anthony Gordon good, because the goals came when they were on the pitch. It just isn’t that binary. The DRC players visibly tired in that last 20 minutes. What is to say it’s the other way round if Gordon starts and Rashford comes on? None of the wingers have been particularly impressive so far. There hasn’t been lots of space in behind even if our previous two opponents didn’t play a Ghanaian low block.Given that no one will be able to breathe at the Azteca, Thomas Tuchel’s tactics will be fascinating. Mexico start incredibly quickly. And there is an obvious danger in defending deep. But it might make sense to do that, conserve energy, and hit them on the break – Kane dropping deep to link the play, something conspicuously absent so far. Maybe give the wingers a half each to completely exhaust themselves.If England do go out in a Mexican haze at 3am in the UK, it will not be an embarrassment. We can all sleep it off and it’ll be OK in the morning.Of course with every World Cup, there’s a tiny, idiotic part of my brain that thinks this will be the year. Winning in Mexico would be a truly impressive achievement. But if England manage it then it’s probably Brazil, Argentina and France all at sea level. Easy: no Bolivian farmer is winning there.