Two miles from the Azteca Stadium, in Coyoacan’s Cafe Cruco, Jose Alvarez, the cafe owner, throws in a trivia: “Do you know what is in Azteca’s tummy?” Then, he informs with a proud smile: “It’s water, a large spring that almost touches the other world.” But, with a raised eyebrow, he adds: “When there is a match, we face water shortage, because the stadium has a thousand restrooms!” He is not far wrong about the dimensions. The Azteca sits like a giant concrete sombrero, the traditional Mexican hat, in the Saint Ursula Coapa neighbourhood, over parts of a volcano that gushed its last fumes in the fourth century. The narrow roads with murals of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata with his bristling moustache are cordoned off, mainly to ease traffic for players, and partly to keep off the teachers demanding a 100 per cent pay rise and truck drivers protesting kidnappings on the highways. None of these tensions has spilled onto the arena, a canyon, a planet unto itself, the most sacred of footballing venues. The …