Let's set the scene. The most storied stadium in football history, the Azteca, hosting the World Cup opener for the third time. The crowd packed in, the flags waving, the world watching. And you, the match, decided your opening statement would be a South Africa giveaway so catastrophic that Julian Quinones had the first goal of the entire tournament gift-wrapped and delivered to his foot in nine minutes. Nine. That is not drama. That is a mistake with a scoreboard.

From that point, you basically coasted. Mexico went up 2-0 through a Raul Jimenez header at the far post in the 67th minute, and the result was never genuinely in doubt. But you had a trick up your sleeve, because if the football was not going to provide the chaos, the discipline certainly would. Three red cards in a World Cup opener, a World Cup first. South Africa's Yaya Sithole got one for hauling down Gutierrez on goal. Themba Zwane came off the bench and, with the game already lost, decided to slap an opponent in the face off the ball, earning himself a VAR-assisted exit. Then Mexico's own Cesar Montes got the third for a foul deemed to deny a clear goalscoring opportunity, a call the crowd greeted with the kind of boos usually reserved for a power outage during a concert.

The final arithmetic: two goals, three red cards, one team down to nine men before the final whistle. You were not a bad match. You were a chaotic one, which is a different thing entirely. You had genuine incident, genuine stakes and genuine noise from the Azteca faithful. But underneath all the card-collecting, the actual football between two sides with eleven players each was largely one-directional and comfortable. You kept us entertained, but mostly by accident.