Mexico World Cup opens with a familiar pairing: Mexico will face South Africa again, repeating the 2010 opener. The two teams drew 1-1 that day, and they are set to meet again at the Azteca on Thursday.
Mexico and South Africa
Siphiwe Tshabalala put South Africa ahead with a spectacular goal in the 2010 opener, and Rafael Márquez answered in the 79th minute to rescue Mexico. That match gave South Africa the first goal and Mexico the equaliser in a fixture that already carried unusual weight, because the same two sides are meeting in a World Cup opening game again.
Matt Reilly’s question gets to the heart of it: “The opening match of the year’s World Cup is Mexico v South Africa” and “This was also the first game of South Africa’s World Cup in 2010.” The repeat is rare, but Mexico have been involved in opening fixtures before, which is part of why this pairing stands out now.
World Cup opening fixtures
World Cup tournaments used to begin with simultaneous games, including Italy in 1934 when all 16 teams started at the same time at 4pm CET on 27 May. The last tournament with simultaneous curtain-raisers came in Chile in 1962, and that history helps explain why repeat opening fixtures are uncommon in the modern format.
Mexico’s place in that history is striking. Brazil met Mexico three times in four tournaments between 1950 and 1962, winning 4-0 in 1950, 5-0 in 1954 and 2-0 in 1962, with Pelé scoring a solo goal in that last one. Mexico were also in the same group as Brazil in 2014, when Brazil opened with a 3-1 win over Croatia and later drew 0-0 with Mexico in their second match.
Women’s World Cup contrast
The Women’s World Cup began in 1991 and has only ever had a single opening game, so no Women’s World Cup opening fixture has been repeated. That contrast makes the men’s repeat opener between Mexico and South Africa even more unusual, because the structure of the tournament has left far less room for the same opening pairings to come around again.
There is one more World Cup wrinkle running in a separate lane: 10 Real Madrid players are at the tournament, and none of them will wear a Spain shirt. The men’s record for the fewest Real Madrid players in a Spain World Cup squad before this competition was one in 1950, when Luis Molowny was the only Madrid player and appeared once against Uruguay in the final stage.
For readers tracking the broader tournament picture, the same World Cup also includes three former Everton managers in charge of Brazil, Portugal and the Netherlands, plus four Chelsea managers working in American dugouts and Steve Clarke with Scotland. But the opener in Mexico remains the cleanest historical hook: a 1-1 draw in 2010, and the same teams meeting again at the Azteca on Thursday.
