Mexico beat South Africa 2-0 in the opening match of the FIFA World Cup with Julian Quinones and Raul Jimenez getting the goals at Mexico City Stadium.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Julian Quinones got the first and helped set up the second as Mexico dominated and downed South Africa in the opening match of the FIFA World Cup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Javier Aguirre\u2019s side took less than five minutes to create the game\u2019s first chance amid an electric atmosphere at Mexico City Stadium. Israel Reyes whipped a cross in from the right, and Raul Jimenez got power behind the bouncing ball, forcing Ronwen Williams to tip it around his post smartly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It merely maintained deadlock for a few minutes. Erik Lira burgled the adidas Trionda from Sphephelo Sithole, and Quinones struck it through Williams\u2019 legs from just inside the box.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bafana Bafana<\/em> will have been relived to go in at half-time at a one-goal deficit, their captain having produced a superb save from a Jimenez header and the post having denied Quinones. <\/p>\n\n\n\n South Africa\u2019s task got significantly steeper shortly into the second half. Jimenez, racing through on goal, was felled on the edge of the penalty area by Sithole, who was sent off. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Mexican fans, including boxing megastar Canelo Alvarez, erupted as 17-year-old Gilberto Mora was sent on, and within 60 seconds they were celebrating a second goal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Quinones played a slick one-two with Jimenez and fed Roberto Alvarado, whose devilish delivery was nodded home at the back post by the Mexico No9. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The contest concluded with another two red cards, South Africa substitute Themba Zwane and Mexico centre-back Cesar Montes seeing red. The latter failed to spoil the home supporters\u2019 mood: El Tri<\/em> were up and running.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019m happy and excited to score my first World Cup goal, in such a spectacular stadium with amazing fans. It\u2019s important for me to acknowledge what my team-mates did to secure the first three points. We\u2019ve felt the support of the fans these past few days. We\u2019re united and today it really showed,” said Quinones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Mexico beat South Africa 2-0 in the opening match of the FIFA World Cup with Julian Quinones and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13707,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[430],"tags":[276,63,431],"class_list":["post-13706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football","tag-fifa","tag-football","tag-world-cup"],"aioseo_notices":[],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Mexico-vs-South-Africa-.jpg",2234,1126,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Mexico-vs-South-Africa--150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Mexico-vs-South-Africa--300x151.jpg",300,151,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Mexico-vs-South-Africa--768x387.jpg",640,323,true],"large":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Mexico-vs-South-Africa--1024x516.jpg",640,323,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Mexico-vs-South-Africa--1536x774.jpg",1536,774,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Mexico-vs-South-Africa--2048x1032.jpg",2048,1032,true],"morenews-large":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Mexico-vs-South-Africa--825x575.jpg",825,575,true],"morenews-medium":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Mexico-vs-South-Africa--590x410.jpg",590,410,true]},"author_info":{"info":["admin"]},"category_info":"FOOTBALL<\/a>","tag_info":"FOOTBALL","comment_count":"0","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Mexico-vs-South-Africa-.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13706"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13708,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13706\/revisions\/13708"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}