World Cup controversy can’t overshadow the world’s greatest show as soccer takes center stage in Mexico. football news

And off we go. Three red cards with a VAR intervention. Two goals for co-host Mexico at the Estadio Azteca. A nightmare start for South African midfielder Yaya Sithole. and one Raul Jimenez’s emotional first World Cup goal At the age of 35

The second game in Group A was even better, a clash of styles South Korea came from behind to beat Czech Republic In Guadalajara, their own voices cheered for support. The tournament is going on. Finally, football can take center-stage.

We had to clear it from Shakira and her friends first. Allow FIFA chief Gianni Infantino, who got to show his face in the opening two matches, his latest glimpse of the limelight with Salma Hayek. But this game always had a way of outshining the stars.

Hwang In-beom and Lee Kang-in were sensational for Korea. Julian Quinones produced a player-of-the-match display for Mexico that not only highlighted the World Cup’s reputation-building potential but sparked controversy over passing out from the back.

“It’s a brilliant touch from the midfielder. He should take it to his centre-back, then his wing-back and they’re away,” said Gary Neville. But Roy Keane disagreed. “For me, it’s all about the goalkeeper. He has better options. Nine minutes at the World Cup!”

Grainy, perhaps, but what can it do for you? The pair began broadcasting on macro issues, debating the implications of US foreign policy while hosting the World. Here they were checking the smallness of Ronwen Williams’ distribution.

This dichotomy may be a feature of the summer as the World Cup itself is an event of contradictions and contradictions. This is football at its purest – stripped of its transfer fees and its billionaire owners, played for its glory.

The Champions League has long since surpassed this tournament in terms of objective quality but every football fan knows that if their passion for the game depended on their team imitating Paris Saint-Germain, they would have given up long ago.

For players, the World Cup stirs emotions like nothing else. Jimenez cried. “It’s probably the greatest moment of his football career,” Neville said. “For Sithole, World Cups can make dreams come true but they can also shatter dreams.” Right in both cases.

But it is also the worst in football. Ticket prices are obscene, travel costs absurd, Infantino’s familiar boast about this being the biggest World Cup ever can’t mask its status as one of the most controversial. Probably the most political in memory.

And yet, it was never this way. Comparisons with the controversies surrounding Qatar and Russia before it are inevitable. But as long ago as 1934, Italy’s fascist leader Benito Mussolini took advantage of the World Cup’s publicity and grandstanding potential.

Separation of football and politics has forever been a tacit hope, and rarely more so than when World Cup hosts engage in direct military conflict with a visiting nation. Iran has already had to move its training base to Tijuana on the border.

There were uncomfortable scenes of players from Senegal and Uzbekistan navigating security checks, a glimpse of what freedom looks like to those expected to provide entertainment, let alone those hoping to see some of it.

Andrew Giuliani, the executive director of the White House task force, was vocal about keeping Americans safe as his top priority. An unforgettable feeling until you consider that he was discussing Switzerland striker Brill Mbolo.

Perhaps most surprisingly, there was Somali referee Omar Artan, who was denied entry into the kingdom. “We will not allow a football tournament to be an opportunity for terrorists to potentially come into the country,” Giuliani said when asked about his absence.

This will be news to the Salzburg native as UEFA has since appointed Artan to referee the Super Cup in August. A fun but revealing insight into the tit-for-tat games that the sport’s major powerbrokers seem to like to play.

If you’ve ever seen the self-aggrandizing and self-commissioned FIFA movie, you’ll know that these men’s suits – and they’re almost always men – look like they made the game. The fact that the game made them.

It holds that energy, that magic. That’s why there is hope, even expectation, that football can be as dynamic as Price and succeed this summer despite all the distractions and obstacles. Football, if you can forgive the pun, really does trump all.

Expect all the emotions over the next six weeks. And if the quality is a bit murky then the stories have to make up for it. Haiti will face Brazil, Cape Verde will face Spain, Curacao will face Germany – and that’s the first round of group games.

Twelve teams in all, each representing at least three different continents, is a truly global affair. There will be scenes of sadness, joy and despair. All of this has been played out not just on football fields and in the stands, but in the squares and streets of the world.

It will all come to an end at New Jersey’s Meadowlands next month but what started in Mexico City was a masterstroke, with the Azteca an arena as evocative as they come, as magical as the images of Pele in 1970 and Diego Maradona in 1986. A place where people fall in love

This opening fixture was absolutely not that. But even opening with a win over a decent Mexico team and the subsequent scene of jubilation in South Korea was enough to remind us what all the fuss is about. Two down, 102 to go. The World Cup has arrived. And there is nothing like it.