World Cup opening in Mexico City overshadowed by protests and soaring ticket prices | OneFootball

The World Cup opens in Mexico City on Thursday at 21:00 with Mexico facing South Africa, but festivities may be clouded by uncertain weather and widespread social unrest.

According to L'Équipe, demand has been frenzied, the 83,264 seats for the opener snapped up as prices soared, with black-market tickets between 2,000€ and more than 6,000€ for prime seats.

Marie-Claudette Cornille Ibarra said her family clubbed together, yet her son Sergio-Eduardo still will not attend. She recalled travelling to León and Mexico City in 1986 to follow France, but says a ticket is now beyond them.

Despite days of heavy rain, thousands marched towards the Azteca on Tuesday as workers put finishing touches around the stadium. Rallied by a dissident wing of the CNTE teachers' union, they seek higher pay and the repeal of a pensions law.

The octogenarian, a former teacher at Mexico City's Franco-Mexican lycée, urged colleagues to set up a makeshift camp near the Zócalo by the Memoria y Tolerancia museum, opposite a FIFA-funded statue of a woman and child. Metal panels four metres high, evoking the Berlin Wall, now ring the main square, recast as a football temple with lavish festivities.

Entry to the fan zone at the foot of the Metropolitan Cathedral runs through checkpoint gates where police screen arrivals. Mexican photographers and cameramen are wearing helmets and bulletproof vests to report on anger that targets FIFA and the state.

On Paseo de la Reforma, statues carry banners saying that while FIFA profits, mothers keep searching, a reference to 130,000 people missing or unlocated. That total has surged since the government launched its war against narcotrafficking. Many of the disappeared are migrants and young women, and few cases receive a thorough investigation.

Nearly 100,000 security personnel have been deployed across the country to contain possible flashpoints. For many Mexicans, it is a steep price to try to protect a football party challenged before it even begins.

Source: L'Équipe