![\"South](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/00248129-614.jpg\"\/)
\nSouth Africa’s Sphephelo Sithole and Mexico midfielder Erik Lira fight for the ball<\/p>\n
Mexico’s misery in World Cup opening games was finally ended as they secured a 2-0 win over South Africa at the Estadio Azteca in a match featuring three red cards.<\/p>\n
The co-hosts had been involved in seven matches which either alone, or jointly, opened previous tournaments, but had won none of them.<\/p>\n
They put that right at the eighth attempt however as goals from Julian Quinones and Fulham\u2019s Raul Jimenez in either half gave them a victorious start against a South Africa side who finished with nine men.<\/p>\n
Cesar Montes\u2019 dismissal in stoppage time took some of the shine off an otherwise upbeat afternoon.<\/p>\n
They were a goal up inside 10 minutes when Sphephelo Sithole was caught in possession on the edge of his box by Erik Lira and the ball fell to Quinones, who drove a low shot through the legs of Williams to give the co-hosts a dream start in the ninth minute.<\/p>\n
\nSouth Africa’s Sphephelo Sithole and Mexico midfielder Erik Lira fight for the ball<\/p>\n
Quinones came close to adding his second with seven minutes of the half remaining, hitting the base of a post from a Brian Gutierrez lay-off that had Williams beaten.<\/p>\n
Sithole\u2019s miserable afternoon was complete when he was red-carded for bringing down Gutierrez just outside the box early in the second period, but it took until midway through the half for Mexico to kill off the contest.<\/p>\n
Roberto Alvarado stood the ball up to the far post from the right and Jimenez headed in from close range.<\/p>\n
South Africa substitute Themba Zwane was sent off after a VAR review for appearing to strike Alvarado in the face late on as the pair tangled, on a day which firmly belonged to the host nation.<\/p>\n
Brazilian referee Wilton Sampaio produced one more red, sending off Montes in stoppage time for a challenge on Khuliso Mudau.<\/p>\n
Watch every game of the FIFA 2026 World Cup live on RT\u00c9 with highlights on RT\u00c9 Sport digital platforms and live blogs on RT\u00c9.ie\/sport and RT\u00c9 News app <\/p>\n
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Listen to the RT\u00c9 Soccer podcast on Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Spotify<\/a> or wherever you get your podcasts<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mexico’s misery in World Cup opening games was finally ended as they secured a 2-0 win over South…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":495025,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-495024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=495024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495024\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/495025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=495024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=495024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=495024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}