Mexico City swept up in World Cup fever as El Tri capture imaginations like never before

The brief

The shirt sellers are out en masse in the streets around Zócalo, the vast main square in Mexico City. The national team have never captured imaginations quite like this and there is almost unlimited demand for a jersey that, even before El Tri sealed a potentially epochal last-16 tie with England, had outsold every other at this World Cup. Three weeks since hosting the opening game Mexico can claim, for a few days at least, to be the tournament’s pulsating heart, and expectations are soaring. “We feel we are going to win,” says Francisco, who is walking along a buzzing Avenida 5 de Mayo. Even in a city notorious for…