ITV’s Mark Pougatch could barely contain his excitement. “Let’s be honest, opening ceremonies aren’t very memorable,” he offered, clearly intent on whipping up viewers into a frenzy of anticipation before events in the Estadio Azteca got under way. A few minutes later, he was at it again. “Nothing is happening,” he shrugged, when the opening ceremony didn’t kick off bang on time. “This is why they don’t live long in the memory.”No one was going to accuse him of overselling Mexico’s big night, but then perhaps he was underwhelmed by the lineup. With the global star power reserved for the final’s half-time show – which features Madonna, Coldplay and BTS – the Mexican ceremony stuck fast to relatively local talent. It kicked off with Maná, the most successful Latin American rock band of all time, who – to judge by the 1992 hit they performed, Oye Mi Amor – have sold 45m records by sounding not unlike The Police. They were pretty good, as was Venezuela’s Danny Ocean and the Mexican singer-songwriter Belinda, both of whom broke out one of the 18 (eighteen!) official World Cup songs: Ocean’s Partidazo was a nippy bit of reggaeton, Belinda’s Por Ella a sweet collaboration with veteran cumbia band Los Ángeles Azules, the latter a disconcerting sight for British viewers on account of the fact that their bass player looked as if he was being impersonated by Paul Whitehouse.Fireworks bring a splash of colour to the Estadio Azteca. Photograph: Angel Delgado/Getty ImagesYou couldn’t fault the ceremony for its brevity: it zipped along at a remarkable clip. Indeed, you could possibly have done with a bit more of J Balvin, who was charismatic and self-deprecating enough to turn up in a cardboard car to perform his 2017 hit I Like it, one of the few latterday Latin pop hits to make a splash in the UK. That notwithstanding, the big draw for anyone not immersed in Latin American music was Shakira and the Afrobeats star Burna Boy – who presumably even Mark Pougatch has heard of – performing yet another official World Cup song, Dai Dai.You used to know where you were with the official World Cup song. It came out, no one cared – at least in England, where none of them have ever even made the Top 20 – and it was swiftly consigned to the dustbin of history. Who today recalls Ricky Martin’s La Copa de la Vida or indeed The Time Of Our Lives by Toni Braxton and operatic man-band Il Divo, the latter a musical cocktail only a lunatic would order? But in 2026, it’s showing signs of mission creep: you can’t move for the bloody things.There is the official Fifa anthem, Desire, sung at the finals draw in December by Robbie Williams and Nicole Scherzinger but subsequently given a reboot. It’s now a frankly terrifying-sounding collaboration between Andrea Bocelli, David Guetta, K-pop singer EJAE and Megan Thee Stallion. There are 16 versions of the official theme, each remixed by a producer from one of the host cities. And there are the aforementioned 18 official World Cup songs, collected together on an album featuring not only Ocean and Belinda, but an online influencer called IShowSpeed and country pop star Jelly Roll. The latter caused consternation with his official World Cup song Lighter, which featured a lot of Bible-belt-pleasing lyrics about religious redemption and feeling “like a broke-down Chevy” and absolutely no references to the World Cup or even football: a suitably America First approach to the whole business.If nothing else, it casts Dai Dai in a more forgiving light: a coolly minimal Afrobeats track that you could actually imagine listening to for pleasure, which given that it’s hard to imagine listening to Toni Braxton and Il Divo without crying for death’s merciful release, counts as a win. Shakira gyrated her famously non-lying hips, Burna Boy occasionally forgot to put the microphone up to his mouth on cue – mysteriously, his voice rang out loud and clear regardless – and the whole business was over in a flash. Cautioned to expect the worst, the viewer was instead presented with something genuinely entertaining, even educational: a pleasant surprise.