MOSCOW — Germany begins its World Cup title defense on Sunday with a game against at Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow. The Germans are trying to become the first country to win consecutive World Cups since Brazil in 1962.
• Refresh here for live updates and analysis from Moscow.
• Here’s the 2018 World Cup schedule.
How to watch: Fox and Telemundo have the broadcast at 11 a.m., but you can stream it here.
1’: Here We Go
Like every game so far, both teams come screaming out of the gate like it’s the Kentucky derby. Hirving “Chucky” Lozano get the first chance, breaking into the box from the right but his shot is blocked. The corner yields a half chance, but Neuer flops onto it.
Jerome Boateng is really hearing from the Mexican fans. Every touch is just a cascade of boos.
Getting Ready for Action
There is a strong communal vibe — for now — in the concourses at the Luzhniki. But then you don’t have to be a master reporter to know that 100-deep beer lines that don’t get ugly would seem to suggest that, no?
The vibe inside the arena’s massive bowl is the same. The Germans are swirling flags to the left of me, and the Mexicans are a wall of green to the right. And across. And behind the Germans. Did they steal the Peruvians ticket-buying playbook?
Note that not-so-faint tint of green everywhere. pic.twitter.com/LwzHuztSOF
— Andrew Das (@AndrewDasNYT) June 17, 2018
Mexico’s Starting Lineup
Mexico’s lineup is out:
Guillermo Ochoa; Carlos Salcedo, Héctor Moreno, Hugo Ayala, Jesús Gallardo, Miguel Layún, Héctor Herrera, Andrés Guardado, Hirving Lozano, Carlos Vela, Javier Hernández
The star? Javier Hernández toiled at struggling West Ham, so Real Sociedad’s experienced defender Héctor Moreno probably has surpassed him as Mexico’s most accomplished performer.
Germany’s Starting Lineup
And here’s Germany’s lineup:
Neuer; Kimmich, Boateng, Hummels, Plattenhardt; Khedira, Kroos; Muller, Ozil, Draxler; Werner.
Jonas Hector, who might have started on the back line, is reportedly ill.
Who’s the star? There is no irreplaceable individual — Germany has too many options to be reliant on any one player — but Toni Kroos comes close.
• Germany fields their oldest World Cup lineup since their championship game against Brazil in 2002.
“Eh … Putin?”
Randy Archibold, the NYT’s deputy sports editor and a former Mexico City bureau chief, writes:
As Mexico takes the field for the first time in this World Cup, it has once again been trailed by the debate over its fans’ propensity to chant “Eeeh .... puto!” to taunt the opposing goalkeeper whenever he lines up and punts the ball upfield.
“Puto” is a homophobic slur, and the Mexican soccer federation has been fined several times for fans’ use of it.
Last month, one of Mexico’s largest beer companies, Grupo Modelo, introduced a campaign for its Victoria beer by suggesting fans shout “Putin!” instead of “Puto.” The campaign was quickly abandoned, however, after widespread condemnation — including from the Russian ambassador to Mexico.
“We are not so stupid to understand it’s a play on words,” said the ambassador, Eduard Malayán, according to the Spanish newspaper El Pais. “We are not accustomed to shouting names or surnames of political personalities in our stadiums.”
Yet as Mexican fans arrived in Russia, news organizations quoted a number of them saying they plan to chant cheekily anyway, some sticking by “puto,” others considering using “Putin.”
“It has become our battle cry,” the Mexican newspaper Reforma quoted a fan vowing to shout “puto.” The newspaper said that even in the Moscow airport the chant was rising up among arriving fans.
Mexico vs. Germany Top Story Lines
• Mexico’s last meeting with Germany, you may remember, was also in Russia: at last summer’s Confederations Cup.
The Mexicans got thumped pretty good that day — by a German second team that went on to win the competition — but it confirmed for many (especially critics of Mexico Coach Juan Carlos Osorio) that there remains a wide gap between what Mexico thinks its team is capable of doing, and what it has done. Today is the next chance to change that narrative.
• Mexico’s captain, Rafael Márquez, is hoping to become the third player to appear in five World Cups, joining his countryman Antonio Carbajal and Germany’s Lothar Matthäus. Italy’s Gianluigi Buffon made five World Cup teams, but only played in four.
• You know who else has been to a lot of World Cups? Germany’s Coach Joachim Löw. This is his third straight in charge of Germany, but he also served as an assistant to Jurgen Klinsmann in 2006. He has two third places and a win, and now he’s a favorite again. So if it ain’t broke ......
• Mexico has never advanced past the second round unless the tournament was on home soil. Mexico hosted in 1970 and again in 1986. Each time, it made the quarterfinals.
In fact, Mexico has exited in the Round of 16 in six straight World Cups, a streak so frustrating that the federation hired a mental coach to help the players. A win over Germany might go a long way toward a more agreeable matchup this time. A loss, and they could be headed on an express train for a date with Brazil.
• A lot of soccer experts would argue that one could make a team of the players Germany left home this summer and still gets to the quarterfinals. They’re that good. But did Löw bring the right 23?
”We need the greed, the fire,” Germany defender Jerome Boateng said. “It’s part of what makes things go off with a bang sometimes in training and on the playing pitch. We will have to fight for every inch.”
• Mexico has accents on the back of its jerseys for this World Cup, and while that might not qualify as a surprise, it was not always the case. A New York Times reporter, Paulina Chavira, noticed the absence last year and wrote an article about the reason they weren’t there: ‘How Ignorance and the Typewriter Left the Mexicans without Accents.’
Long story short: Mexico registered its players with FIFA with their passports, and their passports didn’t have accents because for years the typewriters at Mexico’s civil registry couldn’t add them.But after Chavira called out their absence on her Twitter feed last summer, Mexico’s soccer federation thought about it and decided she was right: the é’s and á’s and ú’s should be there. So Javier Hernandez is now Javier Hernández, and all is right in Mexico’s grammatical world. The soccer? We’ll see today.
• Germany has won four World Cups, and is among the favorites again this year. The country’s talent pool is so deep that Löw brought a second string to last year’s big World Cup warmup tournament, the Confederations Cup, and won it away.
Some Pregame Reading
• Jonathan Mahler of The Times has a great piece today in The New York Times on Mexico’s coach, Juan Carlos Osorio, the man trying to navigate his team, and himself, through the center of a storm.
• The mental coach helping Mexico’s player cope is actually a Spaniard, Imanol Ibarrondo.
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