Mexico beat South Africa 1-0 in the World Cup opener in Mexico City, and the game was settled after only nine minutes when the visitors gave the ball away and then failed to deal with the shot. The Azteca was already full 90 minutes before kick-off, with all 83,000 seats taken for a night that began with music and ended with Mexico celebrating the first goal and first win of the tournament.
Shakira returned to headline the opening ceremony and sang Dai Dai, the song most fans had come to hear before the football started. Andrea Bocelli then performed DNA just before kick-off, giving the occasion the sort of pageantry Fifa likes to attach to its biggest stage, and the stadium noise matched it.
That early goal mattered because this was not just any opener. It was the reverse of the 2010 fixture in Johannesburg, when South Africa held Mexico to a 1-1 draw, and it came in a country that had waited 40 years to see a World Cup game at home. For Mexico, the scoreline gave the night an immediate edge; for South Africa, the careless passing and poor goalkeeping that led to the gift made the match feel lost before it had settled.
Gianni Infantino used the tournament to strike a very different note from the one he had struck before. Six months ago, Donald Trump called him the “King of Football” in Washington, but this time the Fifa president described his body as just a sports organisation with little influence over immigration and security policy. That restraint sat awkwardly beside the showpiece setting, where football, music and ceremony were all meant to say something bigger than the game itself.
Shakira’s return also carried its own history. She had helped define the 2010 World Cup with Waka Waka, while the new tournament arrived with questions still hanging over that era and the money tied to it. Mexico got the result it wanted, South Africa was left with a mistake it could not undo, and the opener delivered the kind of clean scoreline that makes every missed pass inside the first 10 minutes look larger than the entire rest of the night.
The next question is whether Mexico can turn that gift of an opening into momentum, because the first match gave them a lead, a full stadium and a symbolic start, but it also left South Africa chasing a tournament that may now demand a far sharper response than the one it offered in front of 83,000 people.
