Opening Match Plays to a 1-1 Draw Between South Africa and Mexico

With the opening match of the 2010 World Cup finally here and gone we look at an exciting opening match that finished with a 1-1 draw between the host nation South Africa and Mexico.

Both teams played pretty soundly on defense really limiting the other sides number of opportunities Both keepers had a few big saves.  Tshabalala of South Africa scored the first goal of this World Cup nailing his first and only shot of the match at 55' Not to be outdone by the host nation Mexco scored on a Beautiful play By Rafael Marquez who took the assist from Andres Guardado and put a nice fake on goalkeeper Khune streaking it right between him and the right post for the score at 79'. 

South Africa had a tantalizing chance to take the lead as forward Mphela exploited the defense of Mexico got off a great shot but just missed as the ball bounced off the left post as goalkeeper Oscar Perez could do nothing about it but watch.  Oh what could have been for the host nation South Africa as they could have taken the lead with just a few minutes left to play but could not capitalize on the golden opportunity. 

So what did we learn from this match-up? South Africa has shown up ready to play.  The opening matches are generally more likely to end up with a draw than any of the other matches but Mexico had to be going in clearly thinking they were the favorite.  Not so fast, South Africa played hard and played to win.  It will be interesting to see how they perform in the next few group matches.  Mexico to me is still one of the favorites to advance out of this group.  They didn't crumble when behind late in the match, they maintained their poise and evened it back up.  Neither team could score a go ahead goal to give their team a win but what a way to start the World Cup, Great Match.

-Jefferson D. Powell