Football Weekly
Joy for Jiménez and Mexico as co-hosts make ideal start: World Cup Daily
12 Jun 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is The Guardian.
Hello and welcome to the Guardian Football Weekly. It's the World Cup 2026 daily pods on every matchday, the football, the politics and whether Barry will kill me for putting butter in the fridge. Today, the tears of Raul Jimenez, his first ever World Cup goal, confirming a very easy win for host Mexico. South Africa gifted them the first, had a man sent off, then had another red card.
You couldn't hope for a nicer start. And quite hard to gauge if Mexico are good or South Africa... are not good. Czechia stuck it in the mixer to lead, but a great comeback from South Korea. We'll do a bit of England, look ahead to tomorrow's games, including the other hosts, the US and Canada.
And then we'll discuss the Somalian referee refused entry, Iran's delayed and denied visas, the Iraqi striker held for questioning and the price of tickets for the tournament. What did the panel think of Infantino's responses in his press conference yesterday? And then to the big stuff, me and Barry living together for six weeks. Who's done the cooking? Who's done the cleaning?
And who's bought two packets of ham and gone to the pub? Everyone just chill, just relax. It's today's Guardian Football Weekly World Cup Daily. On the panel today, Barry Glendening. Welcome. Hello, Matt.
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Chapter 2: What emotional moment did Raul Jimenez experience during the match?
I've thrown you under the bus already, but that's how it should be. Barney, Ronnie, welcome to LA. Hi, everyone. It's nice to be welcomed. Thank you. That's okay. Jeff Ruter, soccer correspondent for The Guardian, joins us. Hey, Jeff. Hey, Max. Debut on the pod. How are you feeling? Good. Good and ready. And over in Mexico, Jonathan Wilson.
Chapter 3: How did South Africa's performance affect the game against Mexico?
Hey, Wilson. How are you doing? I'm very good, and you can tell from that that Wilson is tired. It's late in Mexico. How are you, Wilson?
It's not late. It's 20 past 10.
Chapter 4: What protests and issues are affecting the World Cup in Mexico?
It's late in the UK, and I'm still in the UK time. I woke up at 3.50 this morning. I woke up at 3.20 yesterday morning.
Jet lag's not my friend. No. Well, the hearts of the nation who aren't being paid to go to a football tournament bleed for you, Wilson. But we'll start with you because you were at the Azteca for the opening game, Mexico 2, South Africa 0. What did you make of it?
Chapter 5: What challenges did the panel discuss regarding the refereeing situation?
Great stadium. It really looks like the Azteca. I was worried that the renovation might change that, but it hasn't. So that was all great. Atmosphere was really good. I think there were some protests outside. I saw some footage a journalist had shot on their phone of that. It was nasty-ish without being too bad. I think it was a little bit smaller scale than it might have been.
And then South Africa were terrible. It was really disappointing. I saw quite a lot of them two years ago at the Copa Nations. I saw the game when they went out to Cameroon this time around. The criticism of them was they were a bit too technical, a bit too flimsy. And then this game, it's just like they thought, oh, we're not going to do any of that stuff.
We're just going to sit in the back five. I can't find the last time we played a back five. We're going to be completely passive. We're not going to try and do anything we're good at. And we're just going to try and keep the margin of defeat down, which I guess they did. But it was a hugely unsatisfying performance for them, I thought.
Yeah. So as I said in the intro, it wasn't hard to gauge how good Mexico are. But the Raul Jimenez header is, I guess, the moment of that game. You know, his tears. It's a classic Jimenez goal. His first ever one in the World Cup. It was a really, that was a beautiful moment. Sort of a moment if you're waiting for a moment in this competition to go, OK, we like football and this is good.
Yeah, it was. And it was necessary because the sort of 10 minutes before that, there'd been not like huge amounts, but there'd been notable pockets of booing from Mexican fans. So even though they won 0-0 up against 10 men, they clearly felt they should have been, well, as Aguirre said, they should have been 4-0 up. Yeah, it was a slightly strange atmosphere.
And so not just an emotional moment for him and a lovely moment for him, but actually I think quite a necessary moment in the game because Mexican fans were starting to get frustrated.
Jeff, I presume you've seen more of Mexico than most of us. What did you make of their showing?
Yeah, I mean, I would agree with Wilson's take. It seemed more like South Africa just wasn't up for it. And you almost wonder if they were trying to return the favor after 2010 and the Sheba Lala moment and trying to give... Mexico, their own sort of kickoff for the tournament. Look, it's not really a vintage generation for Mexico.
They haven't really produced, you know, the next Andres Gordado, the next Carlos Vela, the next Chicharito. They're still trying to figure out what the path forward will be for their development. And the Liga Mequis is also obviously, you know, done away with promotion and relegation there.
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Chapter 6: How is the atmosphere in Mexico during the World Cup?
Stop playing the ball out from the back. You're not going to stop doing it. It's no point. You don't have to do it. Don't do it. But I thought the refereeing thing, oh God, I'm talking about refereeing instantly. But that's the point. There's going to be a problem with micro-refereeing in this tournament.
We had a TV close-up of the VAR room on the feed beforehand and they kind of stood to attention. I mean, nobody wants it. There are two kinds of people who watch football. People who actually care about the rules and want them to be enforced and think that's what the game is. It's about the enforcement of rules. and people who just don't care.
And I'm one of the latter, and we have given the game to the former, and those people are really enjoying it. But I think we need a light touch with this. I thought two of those red cards were really soft, particularly the violent conduct one. I agree with the utterly baffled expression of the player concerned. It was a ridiculous call, in my opinion, and I was sad to see it.
You're frowning, Barry.
Well, I kind of agree with Barney, but he seems to be suggesting we just don't bother having laws of football. Just throw a ball in and see what happens, which would be great.
Amazingly, I'm not actually suggesting we don't have laws. The laws exist for a reason. They exist to make the game work, not the other way around. The laws are just there to stop the whole thing descending, essentially to stop it descending into a formless mess. And as long as it's not doing that, these aren't...
like strict liability actual injustices that need to be corrected i could see why they would get like he does move his hand down i don't know what you think wilson the violent conduct one he does sort of go in for an hour he doesn't really connect that much i think he slaps him around the back of the head i think it's an obvious red card i think barney's watched yeah the premier league where you can do that kind of thing these days don't you should be allowed to he slapped him so it's a red card i
Probably just have a more slightly more more robust, more muscular take than you on what what what the game is. I mean, if that to you is a shocking incident, then I I respect how you feel. I don't want to make you feel unsafe. And yeah, we must we must stop people doing that kind of thing.
Wilson, we've talked a lot about the US as hosts. We haven't really talked about Mexico as hosts. How has it been in Mexico? Is there the World Cup fever? What's the vibe? I'd heard from other people in Mexico, real fans are being priced out of those games as well, despite the Azteca being full.
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Chapter 7: How are ticket prices impacting fans at the World Cup?
And there could well be murder in it for people. We'll get to that. All right, that'll do for part two. Part three, we'll do all the stuff off the pitch. Welcome to part three of the Guardian Football Weekly. So lots of stories of players, officials and staff being denied entry to the US. The most high profile was the referee Omar Artan, Somalian referee denied entry.
Somalia is on the US travel ban list. He became a FIFA referee in 2018, was at AFCON in 2023. 2025 was named African.
men's referee of the year he said in an interview with the new york times i had the right papers and everything i had the right visa adding he'd also showed documentation from fifa as well as photographs of his career over a decade as a ref a trump administration source said this individual was seeking admission to the united states upon further inspection by the custom and border protection derogatory information including association with suspected members of terror organizations
was discovered making the traveler ineligible for admission to the U.S. under the Immigration and Nationality Act. President Trump's administration will not allow any security threat to enter our country full stop. Around the same time, Gianni was on Instagram posting with the streamer I Show Speed. And in his press conference...
gianni said it's unfortunate what happened to the referee from somalia we don't control everything we try we will discuss we will speak we will see sometimes it's good to chill relax we work on everything we try to solve everything sometimes to immediately start screaming and shouting has the opposite effect of finding a solution um barney you've written about this
Well, yeah, I mean, you know, you know me, you know, I'm chilled. I mean, when you think about the idea of being chilled, you probably think about me.
Obviously.
You probably think about me a lot in between thinking about. But that's another. I mean, this is just disgusting. I mean, it's repulsive. Like, it's grandstanding. It's performative. Obviously, this referee is not a security threat to the United States. Obviously.
How it's how it's been allowed to get this far I would like to know a bit more about because it's absurd that somebody gets this far and has then it turned away and But this is – I mean, it's Trump speaking to his base. There are plenty of people who don't think this is disgusting and think it's great and think this is what should be happening.
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