Thomas Tuchel said that he would be packing ear plugs.Morgan Rogers was calm but slightly apprehensive. “I won’t be happy if it wakes me up,” he said. “We’ll see how it goes and deal with it as best as possible. It’s just another obstacle to overcome, another hurdle.”England’s manager and players were preparing — logistically and mentally — for what Mexicans call a ‘serenade’. It sounds romantic. Much more romantic than a load of people gathering outside the team hotel in the dead of night, and making a racket in an attempt to prevent Mexico’s next opponents from sleeping.It had happened when Ecuador’s squad arrived in Mexico City on Monday evening: hundreds of people on the street, right at the bottom of the Westin Santa Fe, chanting and honking car horns well into the night. The scenes went viral on social media. They also provoked a stiff response from Ecuador’s football federation, who labeled it “conduct (that) falls far short of the principles of fair play, equity, and unity that a football World Cup should represent”.This is, to be clear, not just a Mexican thing. It is a regular occurrence ahead of matches in South America, for instance, pretty much priced into any away game in the Copa Libertadores or the Sudamericana. Most of Ecuador’s players would have experienced it before. That didn’t make it any less annoying.The question was whether the same thing would happen to England. Sunday night provided an answer: there was a repeat, but on a much smaller scale.This time, the police were prepared. There were two perimeters set up, one preventing vehicles from passing, the other stopping anyone on foot. Even the inner ring was 200 metres from England’s hotel.The cordon outside the hotel in Santa Fe, Mexico City (James Manning/PA Images via Getty Images)At 11.20pm, there were no more than 30 people gathered on the road. A couple of them shouted “Mexico, Mexico!” Someone had a portable speaker; there was a bit of a singalong. Police officers sat on car bonnets, looking bored.