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It is history in the making as Bafana Bafana meet co-hosts Mexico at the fabled Estadio Azteca in Thursday’s 2026 World Cup opening game (1pm in Mexico City, 9pm SA time).
The tournament’s opening match has a huge viewership and this one, according to reports, is on track to smash the TV and streaming record for the first game, with projections of 1.1-billion live viewers worldwide.
It is a replay of the opening game when South Africa hosted the 2010 World Cup and Bafana drew 1-1 with Mexico in the opener at FNB Stadium.
Fascinatingly, Belgium played hosts Mexico in the opening fixture of the 1986 World Cup, regarded by many as the greatest-ever of the global showpiece. That means Bafana coach Hugo Broos, who started for Belgium that day, will have played in the 1986 opener at the Azteca and on Thursday will be coach on the sidelines of the 2026 first game, 40 years later.
Broos’s legendary Belgium reached the semifinals, the defender famously taking the ball and smashing in the third penalty in the quarterfinal shootout in Puebla after Spain’s player missed, and Broos’s teammates were holding back from the huge spot-kick.
The tough-tackling centreback did not play as Diego Maradona schemed a masterclass 2-0 defeat of Belgium in the semifinal, back at the Azteca.
Maradona’s heroics in that World Cup, where his team Argentina lifted the trophy with a 2-1 win in the final — along with other maestro displays from Harald Schumacher, Gary Lineker, Enzo Scifo, Careca, Zico, Michel Platini, Enzo Francescoli and more, made it one of the standout tournaments.
In the first World Cup Mexico hosted in 1970, the team largely regarded as the greatest, Pelé-led Brazil, beat Italy 4-1 in one of the greatest finals.
The Azteca, then, is a stadium of dreams.
Bafana will enter the ground with dreams of their own. They are playing in their first World Cup in 16 years and first as outright qualifiers since Japan and Korea in 2002, 24 years ago.
They will want to break their duck of being unable to achieve what Banyana Banyana did at the 2023 Women’s World Cup of progressing past the group stages. The expansion from 32 to 48 teams in the men’s World Cup theoretically presents them that opportunity.
Theoretically, because in a World Cup where more qualified teams also means more strange minnows, such as Haiti, Curacao, Jordan and Uzebekistan, Bafana have a tough group.
If a spotlight like Bafana have never experienced ― amid an audiovisual wall of green and noise in the opener against the co-hosts ― was not enough, they meet tidy outfits in Czech Republic (June 18, 6pm SA time) and South Korea (June 25, 3am SA time) after that.
Mexico are ranked 15th in the world and this is their 17th World Cup (out of 22), where they are regular last 16 competitors. Czechia are ranked 41st and, while they are ending a 20-year absence, are almost permanent European Championship finals competitors, reaching two of the last four quarterfinals. South Korea are ranked 25th and are experienced World Cup campaigners, having been to 12 tournaments, six of them since finishing fourth as hosts in 2002, with two last 16 progressions since.
Bafana, ranked 60th, have exited in the group stage in their three World Cups. They will hope some emerging talent, a spirit of revival under Broos, and hunger to perform on the stage can see them punch above their weight.
If they cannot, and if it does not go their way and they fail to be among the top two in Group A, or eight best third-placed finishers from 12 groups, to reach the last 32, there will be disappointment, and inevitably, plenty of criticism.
In that event, let’s remember these footballers are also just human, and they have fought to return Bafana to the World Cup, and would have fought for themselves, their families and the nation to do well in the tournament, which is also co-hosted by Canada and the US.
Not that we as a nation need to start bracing for disappointment, as has been the case in Bafana’s almost two decades of disappointment before a revival under Broos.
The coach has been there on the biggest stage — in Mexico, nogal. He can coax a team with potential to make up for lack of experience to surprises. In that case, let the party begin.
There’s a World Cup coming and, as it occurs too rarely, 63-million South Africans can back their own green and yellow, rather than having to pick another country’s team to support.
That’s already something really major to celebrate.
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