Mexico 2 South Africa 0
Mexico off to a flyer in a fiery game to open the World Cup, the Azteca was filled to the brim with optimism going into the first match of the tournament and the home nation didn’t disappoint with a pretty convincing win over a poor South Africa, Mexico came flying out of the blocks early and scored in the 9th minute as Bryan Lira pounced on a poor touch from Sithole with the ball falling to Julian Quinones who fired the ball through the keepers legs to put Mexico 1-0 up. From there Mexico were completely dominant in the first half and should have scored more goals but poor finishing and some good goalkeeping from Ronwen Williams kept the score at 1-0 going into half-time, shortly into the second half a brilliant pass was played in behind the South Africa line to Bryan Gutierrez who whilst running through on goal was brought down by Sithole who was shown a straight red for denying a clear scoring opportunity in the 49th minute. South Africa were defending relatively well up until a brilliant cross from Roberto Alvarado found Raul Jimenez at the back-post who headed home to double the lead for Mexico in the 67th minute, the red card drama wasn’t over as in the 84th minute Themba Zwane was shown a red card for a slap on Alvarado putting South Africa down to 9-men for the last ten minutes. Or so they thought as Mexico got in on the action two minutes into stoppage time as Cesar Montes was shown a red card for a poor challenge on Khuliso Muadau, an eventful opening game to say the least.
How far can Mexico go at this World Cup? I think the score line is being quite generous to South Africa as on another day Mexico easily could have scored 4 or 5 if they were more clinical, despite that Mexico were really comfortable all game as South Africa offered very little going forward to trouble their backline creating only 0.07Xg in the entire game which I think says it all. It’s hard to gauge the performance as South Africa were absolutely horrific but you have to give Mexico credit as well with the pressure on them in an opening game at their home stadium, the Montes red card was really unnecessary at the end of the game and could cost them dearly as he’s the captain of the team at centre-back where they don’t have tons of options. The game against South Korea will tell us a lot more about this Mexican team in this World Cup as they are closer in levels of quality than South Africa were tonight along with what Czech Republic will probably be, I wouldn’t want to be playing this Mexico team at the Azteca in the knockouts.
It doesn’t get much worse than that for South Africa. The expectations weren’t high for South Africa heading into this World Cup but I don’t think even the most pessimistic South African could have predicted how bad they were today, my preview of the team was pretty hopeful with the way the Mamelowdi Sundowns played at the Club World Cup last year but we saw none of that today as they sat back and basically waited to be beat for the 90 minutes. Then you have the two red cards which are disastrous for this team that already lacks quality with the second one coming from pure stupidity by Themba Zwane slapping a player for no reason which is going to cost him his tournament unless South Africa qualify which isn’t likely, I have some sympathy for Sithole as he tried to get out of the way of Gutierrez but his momentum brought the Mexican down which sealed South Africa’s fate early in the second half. A disastrous opener for South Africa but they do have two games to redeem themselves so it’s not all doom and gloom.
What a moment for Raul Jimenez. You can’t help but be happy for Raul Jimenez who scored his first goal in the World Cup for Mexico and you can see what it meant to him with his celebration after the goal which secured the three points for Mexico, after the clash with David Luiz in 2020 which fractured his skull and required emergency surgery to save his life he returned to football in 2021 but it’s taken years for him to regain his form and confidence which we’ve seen for Fulham over the last two years. He’s now got the reigns to lead this Mexico team in a World Cup and who knows how far they’ll go with the home crowd backing them from the Azteca.
Mexico all but qualified already in the first game. With the extended format of this World Cup I think three points will be enough for Mexico to at least finish as one of the best 3rd place teams and that’s if they lose the next two which is unlikely considering how well they played tonight, for South Africa it’s going to be tough in the next two against Czech Republic and South Korea where they’ll need at least one win which I can’t see happening to be honest although I’m open to be proven wrong. Looking forward to watching what’s shaping up to be a great World Cup.