Review of the opening World Cup match
South Africa 1-1 Mexico
The hosts opened up the World Cup in dream fashion by scoring the tournament’s very first goal, but the fairytale ending of winning the first match was denied to bafana bafana by a late equaliser from their Mexican opponents.
The first half was goalless but far from low on action, with boh sides looking competitive and South Africa, spurred on by what looked and sounded like an incredible atmosphere, showing pace and flair that hadn’t been seen from them in their friendly matches. Despite this Mexico looked like the better team and dominated the first part of the match. Mexico had a couple of good chances in the first half, with Alessandro dos Santos looking like he could have netted the earliest ever first World Cup goal in the second minute of play, but this attempt, along with another decent chance from Franco at 32 minutes were fruitless.
In the second half, Siphiwe Tshabalala became a national hero when he fired in a superb shot in the 55th minute, which was followed by one of the best goal celebrations we are likely to see in the competition, as the players lined up and did a little synchronised dance as the crowd went wild.
Teko Modise had a chance to secure a home victory in this opener at 76 minutes, but sadly for the legions of bafana bafana fans filling up Soccer City with the sound of their air horns he missed. Modise had a few excellent moments in this game but here he just didn’t get enough power in the strike to get it past Perez.
Andres Guardado found an unmarked Marquez at the far post and the Mexicans found their equaliser – Khune had no chance of stopping this shot and it looked like a dream win for South Africa was off the table. Even at this point though, the South Africans stayed in the game and had a close chance of scoring a winner, but Mphela’s left-foot strike hit the post and denied them the win.
As outsiders in the tournament despite being the home nation, South Africa and their fans will most likely be very happy with this hard earned point, and with going down in history as the first team to score in a World Cup on African soil.
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