The Azteca was full 90 minutes before kick-off. 83,000 people who had spent 40 years waiting, who had navigated road closures, dodged striking teachers, and ignored the families of the 130,000 disappeared still demanding answers, just to be there. And then Shakira came on.
Let's be honest: her return was the second-most dramatic event of the night, and only because the first involved Gianni Infantino trying to convince us the World Cup is still about football.
The Infantino rebrand: a masterclass in tone-deafness
The FIFA president used his pre-match address to unveil a new 'slogan' — something about football uniting the world. This from the man who presided over the Qatar controversy, the Super League panic, and a tournament expansion that will see teams playing in three different time zones. The irony was so thick you could have spread it on a tortilla.
Infantino's pitch was that the World Cup is a 'global family'. A family where the host nation's police tear-gas striking teachers. A family where 130,000 people are missing and nobody in the suits mentions it. A family where the kick-off was delayed not by protests, but by FIFA's own logistical chaos. The rebrand is a lie, and everyone in the stadium knew it.
The long-haul games: football's new dystopia
Then there was the actual football. Mexico versus New Zealand, a match that kicked off at 10pm local time — because broadcasters in Asia wanted it. The players looked like they were running through treacle by the 70th minute. The crowd, fuelled by beer and nostalgia, started to thin out by the 80th. The game ended 1-0, a Raúl Jiménez penalty in the 23rd minute that was as inevitable as the flight delay complaints on Twitter.
This is the new normal. Teams will fly from Mexico City to Auckland, play in the same time zone as their breakfast, and then do it again three days later. Infantino calls it 'innovation'. The players call it 'being asked to run a marathon on a treadmill at 3am'. The fans call it 'unwatchable'. The rest of us call it 'the price of globalisation'.
The one human detail that matters
Before the game, a man named Jorge held up a sign that read: 'My daughter disappeared in 2016. I am here for her.' It was the only moment of the night that felt real. Not the fireworks, not the slogan, not the Shakira comeback. Just a father in a stadium, holding a cardboard sign, while FIFA counted the sponsorship dollars.
That's the World Cup now. A grand distraction from everything that's broken. And it works. Because by the 90th minute, everyone was arguing about the offside VAR decision that ruled out an equaliser for New Zealand. The protests were forgotten. The missing were forgotten. The long-haul fatigue was forgotten. Only the result mattered.
And the result was a 1-0 win for Mexico. Which, in the context of this tournament, feels like the most honest thing that happened all night.
Football is still beautiful. But the people running it are making it very, very hard to love.