World Cup starts in Mexico City

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0:53Hello and welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service. We're coming to you live from London. I'm James Menendez and we are going to begin today in Mexico City because the wait is over. An hour ago the 2026 World Cup got underway at the Azteca Stadium in the city with one of the co-hosts Mexico taking on South Africa. It is just the opening salvo in a five and a half week-long extravaganza of football involving a record 48 different teams playing right across North America, from Monterey to Miami, Boston to Vancouver, Houston to Guadalajara, with teams and their fans crisscrossing the continent while billions watch at home on TV.

1:35Well, before kick-off came a star-studded opening ceremony, with Shakira and Burner Boy performing the official World Cup anthem. The run-up to the start of the tournament has not been without controversy, of course. Exorbitant ticket prices, fans from some countries not been allowed to travel to the US, and Africa's top referee from Somalia being refused entry. And in Mexico City, there has been some disruption from protesters. But for fans like Ivan Toribio, it's all now about the football. Ivan is from Los Angeles, but he's travelled to Mexico for today's opening match, part of the biggest Mexican supporters group in the US.

2:12I spoke to him a little earlier on. Very excited. I actually, I planned to be here. Then I was like, I'm not going to go. But like six weeks ago, I was like, you know what? I'm just going to spend$3 ,000 and get a ticket. So yeah, I'm here. I'm excited for the game. I'm excited for everything that's been going on. Is it an expensive trip? I mean, we've heard a lot about how the ticket prices are high and presumably accommodation is pretty expensive too. You know what? Honestly, yeah, it is expensive. But the way I see it, or maybe I'm just biased about it, I don't know when I'm going to be able to see Mexico play.

2:43So that's why I decided to be here. I might not be able to make another World Cup if they open up here in Mexico again. So yeah, it's a little pricey, but I think it's worth it. How many Mexico supporters from the US are there for today's match, do you think? Oh my God. I don't have an exact number, but just from talking to people from today and yesterday, there's thousands of them. And is it a happy, friendly atmosphere in the city at the moment? Oh, the atmosphere, it's indescribable, honestly. Everywhere you go, you see people wearing, like, Mexico jerseys, there's people chanting. You see people singing, Cialito Lindo.

3:22Yeah, it's an indescribable feeling. Mexicans love to party, and party and soccer is just part of our culture. Did you notice any of the protests that have been taking place in Mexico City? Because we've been hearing about that a bit. Yeah, so actually I have seen them. I went to the bank, and they're around the Zocalo. The whole entire area is actually blocked off by them, and they have barricades, So it's kind of tough to get around that little area, just getting around them. But I've seen them. They've been peaceful. I haven't seen any violent protests, but they're there. They're just around the entire area.

3:55Tell us about Pancho Villa's army, your supporters club. How many of them are there with you? We have about 320 some odd people here from across the country. We're the biggest supporter group for the national team in the United States, for the Mexican national team. We support the male and female team as much as we can. what do you think your team's chances are today against south africa oh i think we have a very good chance of beating africa uh i think a big big factor is gonna be playing here at home that's like huge you know having the fan support cheering for them chanting for them i think that's gonna be like huge for the team big boost and and and what about the the usa team i mean you were born in the u.s are they your sort of second team or are you not going to be supporting them uh oh man how can i be very nice about this you don't have to be nice okay so yeah so i was born in otaku the south africa but i support me in a lot of ways my parents came as immigrants and with the current administration to be honest i don't want to support team USA at all i'd rather see like somebody like i don't know who else is in there i'd rather see south korea do better than to be honest.

5:08Okay, prediction for the score today? I say today, give us 3-0, Mexico. Mexico fan Ivan Toribio. Well, the South African captain and goalkeeper is Ronwin Williams. He talked to the BBC before the match about his excitement. The two most important games at the World Cup is the opening and the final. So amazing, you know, but we know it's going to be difficult. We know the pressure is going to be extremely high. They're not going to make it easy for us. They're going to intimidate us. They're going to have the whole country behind them. Well, Ronwen Williams was talking to the BBC's Isaac Fannin and Isaac is watching the opening match at the Mexican Cultural Center in Los Angeles and joins us on the line.

5:52Good to have you with us on the programme. It certainly was a difficult first half for Ronwen Williams, wasn't it? It really was. Yeah, Mexico were fantastic in the opening half. And just as we came off for our last hit, Mexico scored the opening goal of this World Cup. Julian Quinone is scoring nine minutes into the match. It's been a brilliant start for Mexico in this performance. This place went absolutely crazy. I see a green in front of me, about a thousand Mexican fans here and they were delighted to see the performance of their team in the first half, James. A thousand people there. I mean, what sort of setup have they got at the cultural centre?

6:27Honestly, it's absolutely incredible. So they've got lots of slots with people selling Mexican items and food and then they've got a massive massive giant big screen in front of the stadium, looks like Mexico could potentially be in, oh no they have cleared it away for a second goal, but yeah we've got a massive massive screen in front of us on an open field with just a thousand people cramped in front of it, it's a beautiful beautiful day here absolutely boiling in Mexico, in Los Angeles I should say and yeah the atmosphere here is absolutely fantastic people I've spoken to have just said that this is such a great opportunity for them to show their Mexican American heritage and their culture one fan just saying she was delighted she was so proud to be here and be around the community and it's not just Mexicans here, lots of people from other South American and North American countries here in supporting the Mexican national team in that opening game.

7:29There is a lot of football to come. More than 100 matches, 48 teams, as I mentioned. I mean, World Cups can be unpredictable, but who is likely to emerge through the group stages towards the end of the knockout stages? Who are your eyes on? I think the big favourites are France. Obviously, they made it to the final four years ago, and they've got a fantastic attacking line-up, Kylian Mbappé, Usman Dembele, Michael Alisse, all really, really top quality players that could play in any country's team in the world. They are probably the big favourites. But Argentina today were announced as the top ranked team in the world.

8:11And they are, of course, the holders. They beat France in that World Cup three and a half years ago in Qatar. So they all believe that they will have an opportunity to retain the trophy. And it's perhaps Lionel Messi's last World Cup. so he'd want to go out with another bang. So France, Argentina, those are the teams to watch but you can't, the World Cup is incredibly unpredictable and the fact that we've got 48 teams, a number of them will believe they've got an opportunity to win this competition. Indeed, Isaac, yeah, I'm just keeping my eyes on the screen as the match unfolds, still 1-0 to Mexico in that match.

8:47Isaac Fallon joining us live there from Los Angeles. Well, as I mentioned, the opening game is taking place at the Azteca Stadium in Mexico City, one of world football's most iconic venues. It has been through a comprehensive multi-million dollar renovation over the past two years to get it ready for the tournament. Our Mexico correspondent Will Grant has been given a look behind the scenes.

9:11Perhaps the biggest challenge facing fans with tickets to the opening match will be simply getting there. Mexico City's traffic is notoriously bad and in the current climate of anti-World Cup protests, some are worried they might not get in.

9:28Outside the Azteca Stadium, a group demonstrating over the disappearance of more than 130 ,000 people in Mexico's drug war played a game of street football under a bridge. They'd spray-painted the words Mexico, world champions in disappearances on the road, while others painted over World Cup billboards, calling for a boycott of the tournament.

9:53The idea is to continue with these protests throughout the World Cup, said one of the organisers, Mar Guerrero, for maximum visibility while the eyes of the world are on this stadium. Once inside the stadium, though, the focus turns to football. So there we have it, into the stadium. The iconic Azteca stadium has undergone a major renovation over the past two years, with the Mexican bank having acquired the naming rights with a loan of around$100 million. I was taken on a tour with the Azteca's director, Fílex Aguirre, who led us into the belly of the stadium. What we are seeing here and what we are going to walk around is a player's path.

10:34He explained that the player's tunnel is adorned with a mural by Mexican artist José Noé Suaro, capturing some of the Azteca's most historic footballing moments. On the other side, a glass-fronted hospitality area, so fans who can afford it can watch the players as they move between the pitch and the changing rooms. So inside the Mexico changing room, it is all branded with the Mexican flag and FIFA World Cup 2026. It feels quite a privilege to be here with just, quite frankly, hours to go until the team come in. FIFA don't have anything considered away or home changing rooms. There are basically two that are identical.

11:17But of course, this one is Mexico's. It is beautifully done, actually. Leather seats in each place. And within a matter of hours, the players will be in here, getting themselves ready for, in some of their cases, the biggest match of their lives. Wow. Amazing.

11:37Well, I've just walked up the steps, out into the stadium, and it is breathtaking. Genuinely one of the finest stadiums in the Americas. No doubt about it, one of the finest stadiums in the world. This, of course, was the site of the Ano de Dios, the hand of God, in that incredible goal that Maradona scored against England shortly thereafter.

12:09The stadium's director, Felix Aguirre, said with hours to go until kick-off, his overriding sensation is one of pride. It's the pride of being a very small part of a very big team that will deliver one of the biggest spectacles in the history of the world. It is resplendent. It is amazing. It looks completely ready. The pitch is pristine. The seats are incredible. The positioning, the layout so that everybody gets a decent view seems really well designed. All that's left now, of course, is 22 players, 80-odd thousand fans and a ball. And that was Will Grant reporting there from the Azteca Stadium in Mexico City, which is hosting that opening match.

13:00We're about five, six minutes into the second half. It is still 1-0 to Mexico. You can keep up with all the latest updates on that opening game on our website and plenty more in the way of features around the World Cup. It's all at bbc.com forward slash news and just search for FIFA World Cup on the menu at the top of the page. You're listening to News Out.

13:35Still to come on the programme, the US singer-songwriter Olivia Rodrigo talks about music making and her new album. I grew up very insular and like very sometimes lonely and I think that's generally the experience of a child actor. You know, you're not around a lot of people your age. And so I think songs were sort of my comfort.

14:04More from Olivia Rodrigo in about 10 minutes time. Let's just recap our main headlines at the moment. The World Cup's kicked off in Mexico City with a co-host taking on South Africa in the first of more than 100 matches. And President Trump has said that a great settlement has been made with Iran. Earlier, he called off some threatened attacks. We'll have more on that in a moment.

14:35This is James Menendez with News Alive from the BBC. In the past hour or so, President Trump has said that a deal has been reached with Iran, though he didn't say much more than that. He was talking to reporters in the Oval Office. we just made a great settlement of the war with the rand and we're going to be uh subject to finalization of documents we should get done over the next few days probably have a signing maybe in europe and uh it's a great thing let's talk to our state department correspondent uh tom bateman uh tom do we know anything else well he was asked a few more questions by the journalists in the last few minutes he was still going actually so this might be some more details coming out but he was asked about that you know how settled is this how is the deal signed off and he said that um as you heard there that they hope to have a signing possibly as soon as this weekend and he said perhaps in europe he was asked about whether the supreme leader in Iran, Moshtem Ahamanai, had signed off on this, and he said that was his understanding.

15:45So as far as the president is concerned, this is as optimistic as he has sounded, I think, over this idea that what is understood to be a short so-called memorandum of understanding with the Iranians could be agreed fairly soon. One of the key questions he was asked is about the Strait of Hormuz. Would it reopen as soon as this is signed? And he said, yes, it would. So, as I say, he's sounding optimistic, but the key point is we still don't have any official word from Tehran about this. So far, Iranian state media had been describing Mr. Trump's move, saying he'd cancelled tonight's planned airstrikes.

16:24They were describing that as a retreat, suggesting that Mr. Trump had been sort of forced into backing off because of Iranian pressure. Yeah, and Tom, the other factor, of course, is Israel's position. These are lines just coming out, as I'm talking to you now, that President Trump and the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have spoken, and the Prime Minister's office in Israel saying that there are various commitments from the US, including the removal of enriched material in Iran, the dismantling of infrastructure, limiting missile production, and so on. This has just been reported on the Reuters news agency.

17:01I mean, I suppose the point about this memorandum of understanding, I mean, it is not an all-encompassing grand bargain, is it? It is not that at all, because what this is, is in various points it had been described as only being a page long. I mean, my understanding is it's a bit longer than that. But this is basically a very rudimentary framework that gets Donald Trump out of the sort of immediate hole he's in, which is the closure of the Strait of Hormuz by the Iranians. So what it would do at the start is to start a process that gets the Strait of Hormuz reopened and the Americans in return lift their naval blockade.

17:37But everything else that the negotiations were about basically gets returned to a point that it was at before the 28th of February, before the U.S. and Israel launched their war in Iran. And you then effectively restart these direct negotiations between the U.S. and the Iranians over dealing with all those issues. But it probably is the case that there will be a sort of statement of intent, an agreement on the agenda in this memorandum of understanding. But it won't agree on the finality of how all those things are done, specifically on the issue of getting rid of Iran's nuclear fuel, its stockpile of highly enriched uranium.

18:14Tom, thanks very much for that update. Tom Bateman, our State Department correspondent, joining us live. If we get any more details, we will, of course, bring them to you on that story.

18:27Now, on the 12th of June last year, Air India Flight 171 was bound for London's Gatwick Airport from Ahmedabad in Gujarat. But instead, it crashed shortly after take-off, becoming one of the worst aviation disasters India has seen in years, killing 241 passengers and crew on board and 19 people on the ground. The BBC has been back to the crash site and spoken to one family whose grief has been compounded by failures in the identification process. Our South Asia correspondent Azadeh Moshiri reports now from Ahmedabad. The planes that fly above are a reminder of how close this crash site is from the airport.

19:08It's about a kilometre and a half from the end of the runway. There are still cars, motorcycles and rickshaws that pass by this site. The rest of it, though, looks like it's suspended in time. authorities seem to have removed the debris from the plane but the buildings themselves the accommodation for the medical students at the nearby government hospital look exactly the way they did a year ago charred walls but metal broken glass yoginda lives about five minutes away from here and he still remembers that day here's videos where you can see him pulling bodies out of the rubble.

19:53He doesn't think anyone he tried to save survived. He said it felt like the bodies were disintegrating into his hands. And the whole scene looks like it's in the middle of the night, even though it was the afternoon, because the smoke is just covering the skies. Those who were sitting inside drinking tea, they also died. It was very difficult to extract them. We couldn't get them out because the seatbelts had caught fire. So it was very challenging, but everyone helped out.

20:26The crash damaged multiple buildings, but the impact stretches even further. In suburbs, villages outside of Ahmedabad, families have lost loved ones. We're traveling right now about an hour out of Ahmedabad, where Roman Vahra lost his aunt, his brother and his three-year-old niece.

20:49I was inside the mortuary ward trying to identify the bodies, trying to find the child and my loved ones. Through my contacts, I got permission to go inside the ward. The bodies I saw still keep spinning in my head. I can't sleep. The condition those bodies were in, the ones I saw, I am never going to forget it until my time in breath. But the work of identifying the dead isn't over. Worse, some remains were wrongly identified. We're back at our hotel to call someone still fighting for answers. Four days after returning to London with his parents' remains, Mitten received a call from police. A CT scan of his mother's casket had revealed it also contained the remains of someone else.

21:39Further testing later on showed they were those of an unidentified man. We called Mitten from Ahmedabad.

21:49Hi Mitten, it's Azadeh, how are you? Yeah, good, not too bad. Bit emotional with this week, to be honest. One year, you know. There is an unknown person in the UK mortuary. I want to be able to get that person reunited with their families. I don't think I know how to grieve if I'm honest with you. and I don't want to let go of finding the answers because I don't want to let go of my mum and dad. A UK coroner has sent palm prints and DNA to Indian authorities but they still have no confirmation of the man's identity. The BBC has reached out to the government of Gujarat as well as the Indian Foreign Ministry but received no response.

22:33Last year, in a statement, the Foreign Ministry said it had been working closely with the UK from the moment these concerns were brought to their attention and that all remains were handled with utmost professionalism and with due regard for the dignity of the deceased. These words are no comfort, though, to families like Mittens. The families we've met seem haunted by the crash. In Ahmedabad, Yoginda still returns to the crash site to feed stray dogs. He told me sometimes he'll see victim's relatives standing there. They let him know they lost someone on the 12th of June. Their grief, like the charred buildings the plane collided with, is stark, unchanged a year later.

23:20And that was our South Asia correspondent Azadeh Mishiri reporting there. You're listening to News Out. Do you stay with us? Lots more coming in.

23:34The CIA has been carrying out covert operations around the world for decades. How has it shaped how people feel about the U.S.? I'm Asma Khalid. And I'm Tristan Redman. And together we host the Global Story podcast from the BBC. As part of our series to mark the United States' 250th birthday, we're exploring the CIA's hidden history. Do you think the word of the United States will be trusted in years to come? For more, check out the Global Story on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Simon Jack. I'm Zing Zing. And together we host Good Bad Billionaire. The podcast exploring how some of the wealthiest people on the planet made their money.