The World Cup’s opening match between Mexico and South Africa in Mexico City on Thursday “faces protest chaos” as thousands “march over Mexico’s crisis of 130,000 missing people and worker conditions,” according to Tom Morgan of the London TELEGRAPH. Frantic last-minute negotiations with campaign groups are taking place amid “fears mass disturbances on Thursday could delay kick-off.” High anxiety “grips security chiefs” at Mexico City’s Azteca Stadium with protests around the stadium having “already begun.” Locals said that the “main concern will be the city’s creaking transport routes grinding to a halt before the curtain-raiser.” Campaigners for Mexico’s missing had “daubed graffiti around the stadium calling for a boycott over the weekend.” By Tuesday, however, “many of the anti-Fifa slogans on hoardings around the stadium had been painted over.” Expected protests and civil disturbances are an “unwelcome distraction” for FIFA President Gianni Infantino, who will give a press conference on Wednesday. Campaigners said that “about 600 mothers of the missing, feared murdered by cartels across Mexico, will be marching” on Wednesday. But “bigger protests are expected on Thursday before kick-off” for the match at 1pm local time (London TELEGRAPH, 6/9). In London, Martyn Ziegler reported some observers in the Mexican capital believe that if the protests “target arterial roads to the stadium, there is a real risk of the kick-off being delayed.” That would be “another, enormous embarrassment” but FIFA officials said that they “hope negotiations between the Mexican government and protest groups will persuade them not to ruin Mexico’s big moment” (London TIMES, 6/9).
NOT A PROBLEM: The AP’s Megan Janetsky reported Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum “brushed off criticisms and denied that there was any social unrest ahead of the tournament.” On Tuesday she said the political opposition “wants to give the impression that there is chaos, that there are problems, right in the middle of an international event we’ve been preparing for a long time.” Police have “largely blocked major protests from taking over main plazas and the area outside of the stadium,” but it “remained unclear” what would happen the day the games kick off and during the month of games that follow (AP, 6/10).
FAMED NAME: The WALL STREET JOURNAL’s Joshua Robinson writes people do not need to be from Mexico to understand Estadio Azteca’s “significance, reverence, and trepidation” that surround the venue nicknamed El Coloso de Santa Úrsula. The 60-year-old Azteca is a “hallowed name across the soccer universe.” But the vibe at the Azteca “may be shifting.” Purists “bemoan some of the recent renovations to bring it up to World Cup standards.” They argue that “lowering the capacity to around 83,000 and cleaning up the concourses has sanitized it.” They also “resent that the place they have always known as the Azteca was assigned a new official name by FIFA for this World Cup” as it will be called Mexico City Stadium (WALL STREET JOURNAL, 6/10). Robinson in a separate piece notes that it “really feels like the World Cup” in Mexico City. He adds there is “excitement and chaos in equal measures” (WALL STREET JOURNAL, 6/10).
