Aguirre draws on home-soil memories as Mexico hunt historic opening victory

MEXICO CITY — On the eve of a tournament freighted with national expectation, Mexico’s manager Javier Aguirre disclosed that he has a starting eleven “structured” in his mind for Thursday’s World Cup curtain-raiser against South Africa at the Estadio Ciudad de México. The hosts, who have never won an opening match in seven previous attempts, will take the field at 13:00 local time hoping to rewrite a vexing piece of history.

Aguirre, who took the pitch for Mexico at the 1986 World Cup on this very ground, told journalists that no experience in five decades of football compares with a World Cup on home soil. The reunion with South Africa carries an echo of the 2010 opener, when the roles were reversed and the sides drew 1-1 in Johannesburg, a match remembered in Mexico for Rafa Márquez’s goal. This is the first time a World Cup’s first fixture has been repeated — and the symmetry has not been lost on Aguirre’s squad.

Viewed from Madrid, press reports highlighted the coach’s revelation that the lineup has been mapped out but not yet shared with the players, a deliberate psychological tactic. In Mexico City, the front pages seized upon Aguirre’s assertion that “it can be a historic day”, with mental strength the decisive ingredient. From the Gulf, one outlet noted the weight of Mexico’s opening-match drought, a statistic the country is desperate to bury. Meanwhile, Aguirre’s own words were reported elsewhere: “The team has grown, the table is set for a great presentation,” he said, while cautioning against a South African side of considerable quality.

As a 70-year-old coach who concedes he is unlikely to see another home World Cup, Aguirre is treating the occasion as a feast that will endure for years. Whether his charges can channel the nervous energy of a packed Azteca into a breakthrough performance will depend, he believes, on a clarity of mind that the players themselves now understand. For a football-mad nation that has waited a generation to host the world, the match is less a fixture than a moment of national reckoning.