“And that’s why Maradona is the greatest player in the world.”
I heard about the Azteca before I saw what it looked like.
Over shortwave radio during the 1986 World Cup, the roar of 115,000 spectators still pierced through the scratchiness of the BBC broadcast after Diego Maradona had weaved through the English.
Pictures of the Argentine legend celebrating the ‘goal of the century’ were published in newspapers in the days following. Streams of toilet roll cascading down the stands of a stadium that housed 115,000 people. A hundred-and-fifteen thousand. How was that even possible?
Once apartheid ended and Fifa allowed South Africa to show footage of that famous goal, the Azteca loomed even larger. The flags hanging from the roof of the stands, the weird shadow in the middle of the pitch and people standing and sitting to produce the Mexican Wave.
There are very few sports venues where the mere mention of the name immediately conjures images in one’s mind.
The Maracana, Wembley, Yankee Stadium, Eden Gardens, Lord’s and Twickenham. Everyone knows which sport is played at those stadiums. It’s easy to picture Mario Götze in 2014, Ian Rush in 1989, Babe Ruth, Rahul Dravid in 2001, Temba Bavuma in 2025 or Bryan Habana in 2004.
The Estadio Azteca in Mexico City is the same. Pelé in 1970 and of course Maradona in 1986.
The first time the World Cup was broadcast in colour — in 1970 — it was the Azteca that lit up television screens.
The final of that tournament, which has earned the moniker ‘game of the century’, was one of the most spectacular in football’s history. Not only a clash of footballing cultures, it also firmly stamped Brazil as one of the greatest teams ever (in any sport), gave Pelé his third world title (making him the only player to achieve that) and also saw the Brazilian captain Carlos Alberto score one of football’s most iconic goals.
If 1970 was about football’s greatest team, then 1986 saw arguably its greatest individual performance. The Azteca saw the ‘Hand of God’ before the ‘goal of the century’ and in the final ― one of the best in World Cup history ― Diego Maradona would also produce a magic pass to set up the winning goal for his teammate Jorge Burruchaga.
The two players who are most definitively attached to the World Cup delivered memorable achievements in a stadium that is one of only two venues to have hosted two World Cup finals. The Maracana ― football’s other venerated ground ― is the other.
It will be a wondrous occasion to see Bafana Bafana bestride the hallowed turf of the Mexican coliseum on Thursday for the 2026 World Cup’s opener against the co-hosts (1pm in Mexico City, 9pm SA time).
It will be like living out a genuine fantasy for youngsters like Rele Mofokeng and Mbekezeli Mbokazi. Some of the older heads like Ronwen Williams and Themba Zwane might share their thoughts on the stadium’s significance.
If they can’t, then Hugo Broos definitely can. The Bafana mentor played there in 1986. It’s a glorious coincidence that the first match for Belgium at that tournament was also against Mexico at the Estadio Azteca.
Broos started and finished the game, delivering a robust early foul on Mexican superstar Hugo Sanchez. He’d undoubtedly like to see the outcome from 40 years ago reversed on Thursday ― a 2-1 defeat.
His players would do well to hang on to Broos’s every word for he knows how to navigate a World Cup, and despite losing that opening match, Belgium would go on to reach the semifinals.
There, again at the Azteca, with Broos this time watching from the bench, Maradona mesmerised once more, scoring what was arguably the second-best individual goal ever.
Broos will feel the Azteca owes him one. Maybe a mazy run from Mofokeng … and another chapter — a South African one — can be written in the annals of the Azteca.
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