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Lift Off at the Azteca! Alan’s World Cup Blog #2

Alan Whykes continues his daily World Cup blog as the tournament explodes into life.

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Waves of relief and joy rippled around the world as the 2026 World Cup kicked off at the Azteca Stadium in Mexico City.

First order of business was the obligatory opening ceremony, which was not quite the Olympics but you could see they spent a dollar: presumably Andrea Bocelli doesn’t come cheap. Not sure about his Korean sidekick, strangely dressed as a blue-and-white Looney Tunes roadrunner. Plus there was about as much arm and flag waving as you could wish for, set to upbeat but bland anthems of the kind that could have been written by AI. And fireworks and drone light shows and lots of shiny things.

The Mexican cultural element resonated more, dazzling with hundreds of energic dancers, a giant Aztec pyramid and gorgeous pre-Columbian symbols.

Finally football took the main stage with co-hosts Mexico welcoming South Africa.

The South Africans at least arrived in style (click the link to see the video):

Even before the tournament started there was a funny broadcast moment at the Azteca. While doing a live cross for Spanish-language channel DSports, reporter Marcelo Benedetto walked off camera so he go and try to get a selfie with pop star Shakira as she arrived at the ground where she part of the pre-game entertainment. Priorities!

I had something of a near death moment when, an hour before kick-off, the Colombian channel I was planning to watch the games on suddenly went on the blink. One imagines the studio technicians probably also had a meltdown as the prospect of the year’s most lucrative advertising window went dark. After a nervous half hour or the vision returned.

Forget fridge magnet calendars, you need a Colombian presidential candidate World Cup fixture list.

Oh, and elsewhere in the country, Presidential candidate Ivan Cepeda filed cases with the Ombudsman and the International Criminal Court against his rival in the run-off election, Abelardo De La Espriella. The claim alleges crimes of conspiracy to commit a crime, financing of terrorism, and illicit enrichment in the context of ties with rebel paramilitary group AUC.

It’s enough to make football a welcome distraction. But hang on, Espriella in national team shirt drag has started running campaign ads saying he won the first half (he indeed topped the first round of voting) and now is calling on Colombians to support him to ‘clinch the victory in the second half’. Cepeda, an urbane Senator not prone to outrageous creativity, has responded by having his campaign team hand out free World Cup fixture lists emblazoned with his campaign messages.

But South Africa have a lot on their plate now. A 0-2 loss and two red cards leave them with it all to do in their next group games against Korea Republic and Czechia. Just to show he was spreading the opening day jitters around, the referee also sent off one of the Mexicans.

Less controversial but still a surprise was the ‘referee cam’ with the main on-field ref sporting a head-mounted camera. Various bits of footage from the device were used throughout replays in the coverage. It’s not clear if it is also being used by the Video Assistant Referee (VAR) system or whether that still relies on conventional TV cameras plugged into a computer analytics program.

Another innovation was the new ‘hydration break’ mid-way through the first half. Despite the temperature being a mild 24C in Mexico City, it still happened…the 3-minutes breaks appear more to be a convenient pause for loading more advertising; SBS, broadcaster in Australia, have even sold sponsorship of the breaks to a junk food chain.

But of course this largely unnecessary disruption to the flow of the game gets disguised as a move in favour of player welfare.

Both inside and outside the stadium there was plenty of fervour and clearly the passion on Mexico was a good choice for the tournament’s opening match. Kudos to Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum who gifted her complimentary ticket to another person and watched the game in the company of the common people at a local fan site.

On social networks there are plenty of clips of fans having a good time. One that stood out for me was a large group of Mexicans tossing a Korean fan in the air and catching him, then embracing him as they chanted ‘Korean friend, you’re a Mexican now!’

Korea line up in the second game of the day against Czechia. I’ll update this post later with some fluff from that one. But Guadalajara is a bit hotter at this time of year – check out the comparison here – so the kick-off is quite late at 21:00 local time.

Tomorrow (Saturday in Australia) sees the debuts of the co-hosts with Canada facing a tricky test against Bosnia in Toronto while USA host Paraguay in Los Angeles; game times are 4:00 and 13:00 AEST. The latter teams are both in Australia’s group so the Socceroos will be watching with interest to see if the weight of expectation crushes Team USA or uplifts them.

With regards to viewing, two football fans are being paid US$50,000 each to watch all 104 World Cup games from a specially built cube in Times Square, New York. Apparently it’s a stunt by a US TV network. Austin Franklin and Kevin Akoto were picked from 6,000+ who applied and, yeah, get to sit in a glass shipping container and watch football till their eyes bleed.

Fans are sitting outside the cube watching them watch the football…like Gogglebox, but live. Please, someone, anyone, come up with a new idea.

Alan Whykes is a Tasmania-based writer and an ex- too many things to list.

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