{"id":730713,"date":"2026-06-12T00:26:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T00:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/730713\/"},"modified":"2026-06-12T00:26:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T00:26:09","slug":"jimenez-and-quinones-net-as-mexico-beat-south-africa-in-world-cup-opener-world-cup-2026-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/730713\/","title":{"rendered":"Jimenez and Quinones net as Mexico beat South Africa in World Cup opener | World Cup 2026 News"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"World<\/a><\/p>\n

World Cup 2026 cohosts Mexico open the tournament with 2-0 win against South Africa, who were reduced to nine men.<\/p>\n

Published On 11 Jun 202611 Jun 2026<\/p>\n

Mexico ignited their World Cup party with a dominant 2-0 victory<\/a> over nine-man South Africa as the biggest edition of the global footballing showpiece kicked off at the iconic Estadio Azteca.<\/p>\n

Julian Quinones scored the opening goal of the tournament in Thursday\u2019s match, and veteran striker Raul Jimenez added a second as the cohosts\u2019 bid for qualification from Group A got off to a smooth start.<\/p>\n

Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of list<\/p>\n

South Africa, meanwhile, never looked like spoiling the opening day fiesta, and finished with only nine men after Sphephelo Sithole and Themba Zwane were sent off.<\/p>\n

The Mexican-coloured red, green and white smoke from pre-game fireworks had barely dissipated before Quinones fired the hosts into the lead on nine minutes, drilling a low shot through the legs of South Africa\u2019s goalkeeper and captain Ronwen Williams.<\/p>\n

A deafening roar cascaded down from the stands of the Azteca, the footballing cathedral that became the only stadium to host games at three different World Cups.<\/p>\n

South Africa coach Hugo Broos had warned his players to be ready for the intimidating atmosphere created by a capacity crowd of 80,824 at the imposing concrete arena.<\/p>\n

But South Africa\u2019s players looked to have a bad case of stage fright as Mexico\u2019s fans greeted each completed pass with a raucous chorus of \u201cOle!\u201d in the opening minutes.<\/p>\n

Sithole seemed particularly affected, being caught in possession trying to play out of the back for Quinones\u2019s opening goal.<\/p>\n

Sithole\u2019s miserable afternoon ended with a 49th-minute dismissal after bundling over Mexico\u2019s Brian Gutierrez when clean through on goal.<\/p>\n

Mexico rammed home their advantage in the 67th minute, with a fine counterattack culminating in Roberto Alvarado crossing for Wolverhampton Wanderers forward Jimenez to nod home at the far post.<\/p>\n

It got worse for South Africa in the 84th minute when Zwane was dismissed after a VAR review for flinging an arm into the face of Alvarado.<\/p>\n

There was still time for late drama when Mexican defender Cesar Montes was shown a red card for a clumsy challenge on Khuliso Mudau on the edge of the penalty area.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"World Cup 2026 cohosts Mexico open the tournament with 2-0 win against South Africa, who were reduced to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":730714,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[6074,596,43,2186,2184,44,1183,588,41,39,42,40,1055,6075,124617],"class_list":["post-730713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-africa","tag-football","tag-headlines","tag-latin-america","tag-mexico","tag-news","tag-south-africa","tag-sport","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-united-states","tag-us-canada","tag-world-cup-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=730713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730713\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/730714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=730713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=730713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=730713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}