Football Daily | The ‘Azteca’ delivers as hosts and ghosts give us that World Cup feeling

MEXI-GO!

There’s an elemental force to football that can never be bottled and sold off. For reasons only known to Gianni Infantino and attendant pen pushers, the Azteca has been renamed the Mexico City Stadium for the Geopolitics World Cup. You can change a name for admin purposes, make punters pay through the nose for tickets, and charge 280 pesos ($17) for a beer (!) but legacy endures. It cannot be costed, sliced and diced. The ghosts of 1970 and 1986 were present and correct, just as present as JJ Balvin, Salma Hayek, David Guetta, EJAE and Andrea Bocelli were for a decent enough opening ceremony as these autotune extravaganzas go. Few would term Mexico 2-0 South Africa a classic tournament opener for the GWC but it served plenty of reminders this still actually means more.

Eternal infamy for Yaya Sithole, whose second-half red card was probably salvation after an all-timer in defensive calamity. The unsheathing of that red, and two others, made the Brazilian referee Wilton Sampaio his own history. There was a lovely moment for Raúl Jiménez, too, as he got on the scoresheet before the Mexican fans booed their team for not piling on the agony for a South African side whose performance was so dreadful it left Quinton Fortune, Aaron Mokoena and Benni McCarthy, South African TV pundits, in speechless catatonia. “What do we say, what went wrong in this game?” asked the anchorman. Answer came there none.

The emotions of the Mexican scorers were diametrically opposed to the deep misery of the vanquished Bafana Bafana. Still, it might help that South Africa’s coach, Hugo Broos is a positive thinker bordering on delusion. “I saw a desperate Mexico,” he roared. “They didn’t know what to do with the ball. The organisation was perfect defensively.” OK, mate. Up in the stands of the “Azteca”, Infantino was surrounded by his praetorian guard of football legends, Roberto Baggio directly behind him. Mexican protests against real-life issues had not affected the big kick-off too drastically, and though journalists in the media tribune complained of fading wifi, the whole thing passed off as uneventfully as might be hoped.

There was, though, a coda. Guadalajara hosted the second match, a rather entertaining comeback win for South Korea over Czechia, attacking football triumphing over a set-piece approach that resembled Dave Bassett’s Wimbledon on steroids. Vladimir Coufal was the long-throwing man with the golden arm who set up Ladislav Krejci’s opener before neat strikes from Hwang In-beom and Oh Hyeon-gyu won it. Classic group-stage fare, though the headlines went elsewhere. The official Fifa attendance figure was 44,985, suggesting 700 empty seats though the television pictures painted a different picture. A football-mad city had voted with its feet. Fifa’s immediate reaction? To stay as mute as those South African pundits.

LIVE ON BIG WEBSITE

John Brewin will once again take the GWC news blog through to 6pm BST (1pm EDT). Taha Hashim is then due to helm minute-by-minute coverage of Canada 1-1 Bosnia and Herzegovina from 8pm BST (3pm EDT). The last action of the day will see USA USA USA battling to a 1-0 victory over Paraguay, with Beau Dure, kicking off at Saturday 2am BST (9pm EDT).

QUOTE OF THE DAY

At the Euros I think we got a few things wrong off the pitch, I don’t feel the group connected as well as it could have for a number of reasons. When it came to the tournament, we were seen as one of two or three teams that could win it. We weren’t playing well, which doesn’t help, so even when we were winning, we didn’t get the feeling that we were as happy as we should be” – Jude Bellingham, there, suggesting that England were lacking vibes at the Euros. Where was Conor Coady when they needed him?

He still managed to do this, mind. Photograph: Ebrahim Noroozi/AP

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Back in the 1994 World Cup, it was suggested the games should be split into four quarters to pander to increased advertising revenue. Needless to say, this idea was treated with the intense derision that it deserved and quickly booted into touch before it was implemented. Thirty-two years later we have ‘hydration breaks’ splitting the game into quarters and two extra advertising breaks. The more things change, the more they stay the same” – Nigel Sanders.

Re: yesterday’s Football Daily. Apologies if this sounds like a story meant for a campfire but it’s hard to convey the feelings and the emotion that this tournament brings to the surface. The first tournament I distinctly remember was the 2002 World Cup – I was in India and the time difference was perfect to catch a game or two after school. I saw it all – Ronaldinho’s smile, the Ronaldo haircut, Oliver Kahn’s intimidating presence and the South Koreans going far (shout out to Turkey). The tournaments that followed were great but it never reached the same levels (for me). I swore as a 12-year-old (in 2002) that I’d go to one tournament in my lifetime; I came close in 2022 but it never came to be. Now we are in 2026, I am to be a citizen of a country that is co-hosting this tournament and, despite the ticket lottery and Fifa circus, I have secured tickets to two games. Twenty-four years later the promise is being kept. The little boy from 2002 will be proud” – Girish Chandra.

If you have any, please send letters to [email protected]. Today’s prizeless letter o’ the day is … Girish Chandra. Terms and conditions for our competitions, when we run them, are here.

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Listen up! It’s the first World Cup Daily podcast. Join Max Rushden, Barry Glendenning, Barney Ronay, Jeff Rueter and Jonathan Wilson as they look back on the big kick-off at the GWC.

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