There were seven minutes on the clock when it started, a hundred voices becoming tens of thousands becoming one, the noise spreading around the Azteca as if by contagion.The words rang out, echoing inside this concrete colossus, spilling over its upper lip and into the streets of Santa Ursula below. Cielito Lindo, the de facto anthem of the Mexican national team, is moving at the best of times. Here, supercharged by excitement, nostalgia and about 43 metric tons of opening-day nerves, it threatened to knock you out cold.“Sing and don’t cry,” goes the refrain, an injunction to smile through life’s sadnesses. Mexican football has known its share, hence the resonance. Here, though, there was nothing to be glum about. No more than 10 seconds after it began, the chorus line was punctured by Julian Quinones’ opening goal — a perfect little World Cup moment, as if bestowed from on high.Also from on high: beer.It rained indiscriminately down from the back seats. So did a seemingly endless supply of card sombreros, handed out before kick-off — decent souvenirs, sure, but even better frisbees. The effect was dazzling, the sense of release palpable. After all the anticipation, all the nostalgia over Mexico’s World Cup heritage, this occasion could so easily have fizzled out, a party with an early curfew. Instead, it took flight.The scenes ahead of the game had been remarkable. Fully five hours before kick-off, you could barely move for fans. You could barely move full stop. Think you know traffic? You don’t. Mexico City’s traffic jams have their own traffic jams, Inception-level gridlock. To compensate, people had come early — to sing, to take photos, to have tequila slopped into their mouths by a stranger in a novelty wig.And so they weaved, in and out of the stationary buses, past the hawkers and the murals, the smoke and the cacophony, a parade of human life. They were serenaded by mariachi bands. Every second person seemed to be in costume: there were lucha libre wrestlers, skeletons, Mayan warriors. There was a man in a dog mask, barking. A troupe of drummers hammered away, rattling every chest within range. The street-level spectacle at the other World Cup venues will probably be great, but it won’t be this.A Mexico supporter in a dog match heads to the game (Credit: Jack Lang/The Athletic)Inside the stadium, as the players warmed up, it was impossible not to feel the history that permeates this place. The Azteca is not the stadium it was in 1970 or even 1986. It has been given countless facelifts, dragged into modernity, for good and ill. Yet the bones of it remain: those imposing external struts, the swaggering sweep of the stands. The sheer scale of it still quickens the pulse when you walk in.Those bones hold stories: tales of Pele, Maradona, the Game of the Century, the Hand of God. Mexico’s own boys of summer — Manuel Negrete, Hugo Sanchez — have been a huge part of the build-up this year. The current coach, Javier Aguirre, was there in 1986, too. When he predicted, on the eve of this match, “a celebration that will last for decades,” he wasn’t exaggerating.It is tempting, looking at the old footage of those last two Mexican World Cups, to ascribe some of the allure to technology. The fuzzy images spark the imagination in the way no HD camera can. Yet there is also an innate beauty to football matches at the Azteca, something difficult to pin down. Maybe it’s the quality of the Mexico City light — hazy, coy. Maybe it’s the altitude, some unexplained particle interplay. No matter; let’s just call it magic.This year, the scope for a few more chapters in the Azteca story is limited. Only five games will be played here; the entire tournament decamps to the US for the quarter-final stage. There is a sense of frustration at this. For Aguirre’s team, it creates an added layer of obligation: Mexico have to create memories, make sure this southern leg of the World Cup is not reduced to a footnote. And they have to do it quickly.This was a promising start. Mexico passed the ball well. Quinones was menacing throughout; Erik Lira skittled around like Scrappy Do in football boots; Raul Jimenez had his moment of personal ecstasy. They should, as Aguirre rightly said afterwards, have won by three or four.Two, though, was enough. Enough to ease Mexico into Group A. Enough to sate the fans, send them back home with full hearts and smiles on their faces. Enough not to puncture the good vibes that will make this World Cup a little more colourful, a little more alive.Jun 12, 2026Connections: Sports EditionSpot the pattern. Connect the termsFind the hidden link between sports terms