Uruguay reached the south of Florida on Sunday night after its flight from Cancún was delayed for a couple of hours in Mexico, but the team still arrived in time for the eve of its first match at the World Cup. The trip ended in Miami Gardens, where Uruguay is due to face Saudi Arabia on Monday night in the opening Group H match at Hard Rock Stadium.
The timing mattered because Uruguay had trained in Cancún on Sunday morning before heading to the airport, leaving little room for disruption before kickoff. The delay was tied to an error involving airline permits in Mexico, FIFA said, and the governing body said the airline apologized for the inconvenience.
FIFA also said it stayed in close contact with Uruguay throughout the delay and worked with airport and operational partners to speed things up and limit the impact on travel plans. That effort appears to have done the job: the team made it to Florida without missing its match schedule, even with the setback measured in hours rather than minutes.
Marcelo Bielsa and José María Giménez spoke with journalists at the stadium on Sunday night, and Bielsa said the flight issue did not create any complications. That is the part that matters most for Uruguay now, because the opener arrives in a tournament built around 48 teams and 16 venues, where any delay before the first game could have become a larger problem if it had carried into Monday.
Instead, Uruguay goes into its opening Group H match with the travel problem already behind it and only one question left: whether the interruption was just a brief inconvenience or the first test of a campaign that has barely started.
