There were seven minutes on the clock when it started, a hundred voices becoming tens of thousands becoming one, the noise spreading around the Azteca as if by contagion.<\/p>\n
Cielito Lindo, the de facto anthem of the Mexican national team, is moving at the best of times. Here, supercharged by excitement, nostalgia and about 43 metric tons of opening-day nerves, it threatened to knock you out cold.<\/p>\n
\u201cSing and don\u2019t cry,\u201d goes the refrain, an injunction to smile through life\u2019s sadnesses. <\/p>\n
No more than 10 seconds after it began, the chorus line was punctuated by Julian Quinones\u2019 opening goal \u2014 a perfect little World Cup moment, as if bestowed from on high. Also from on high: beer.<\/p>\n
It rained indiscriminately down from the back seats. So did a seemingly endless supply of card sombreros, handed out before kick-off \u2014 decent souvenirs, sure, but even better frisbees. <\/p>\n
The effect was dazzling, the sense of release palpable. After all the anticipation, all the nostalgia over Mexico\u2019s World Cup heritage, this occasion could so easily have fizzled out, a party with an early curfew. <\/p>\n
Instead, it took flight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There were seven minutes on the clock when it started, a hundred voices becoming tens of thousands becoming…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":731432,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-731431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=731431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731431\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/731432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=731431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=731431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=731431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}