Diego Luna was seven years old in 1985. A devastating magnitude 8.1 earthquake struck Mexico City just nine months before the start of the FIFA World Cup. He recalls that the overall feeling among residents of the capital was “really intense,” “very sad,” and that there was a “sense of helplessness” because of the state’s absence. Amid that, as in other tragedies that have hit the country, the actor says there was also a “very beautiful” feeling of solidarity and community response — but “it seemed like the destruction made it impossible to imagine a World Cup.” What lay behind Mexico becoming the first nation to host the tournament twice is a mix of true events, anecdotes, acts of corruption, and a few urban legends. Or at least that is how Netflix movie México 86 frames it: a satirical account of how those who run soccer off the field focused national efforts to turn the event into a symbol of unity and recovery after mourning, but which also helped trigger the Mexican national team’s ban from the 1990 World Cup in Italy.

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Everything a traveler encounters upon leaving Mexico City International Airport (AICM) illustrates the problems facing the country’s largest terminal. The first thing you see after stepping outside is long lines, cars being towed away, and National Guard officers handing out fines. The standoff between licensed taxi drivers and ride‑hailing apps over control of the airport has been simmering for months, becoming a strange daily routine of enforcement operations and drivers losing their cars at both terminals of the airport. But with only eight days before the World Cup begins in the capital — bringing millions of visitors— the conflict is intensifying.

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Only 24 hours remain before the World Cup kicks off in Mexico and the country is going though its final dress rehearsals. Preventing demonstrations on opening day is already a pipe dream: negotiations with teachers have stalled and search groups will march to make their missing relatives visible. With everyone in position and the cards on the table, attention is focused on avoiding the worst-case scenario for the government of Claudia Sheinbaum — an image of a police officer striking a teacher circling the globe on the day the country is playing for its international image. The concern is not unfounded: on the first day of protests a teacher lost an eye in clashes with police. The past two weeks have tested containment measures, and Wednesday will be the last chance to fine-tune the public staging. To ease the pressure, authorities have canceled classes for Thursday and ordered remote work for public servants.

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As the start of the World Cup draws near, the United States government has set its sights on foreign influencers. Immigration authorities have warned that individuals entering the country on a tourist visa may not use their stay to produce content intended to generate income on YouTube, TikTok, Facebook or other online platforms — a practice that for years has been common among digital creators worldwide.

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The largest FIFA World Cup in history kicks off on Thursday, June 11, at the Estadio Azteca. The opening match between Mexico and South Africa will be the starting gun for a tournament also hosted by Canada and largely staged in the United States, where 78 of the 104 matches will be played, including the final on July 19. FIFA president Gianni Infantino said last May at the United Nations headquarters in New York, an organization founded in 1945 to prevent armed conflict, that “the eyes of the world will be focused on North America.” “We spend so much time in discussing what divides us, but actually we realize that when we put people together, what happens is that there are many more things that unite us than the things that divide us,” he added. The World Cup, however, will be co-hosted in a country that just over 100 days ago launched a war against Iran, alongside Israel, without any United Nations endorsement, that has an open diplomatic dispute with another co-host, Mexico, and whose anti-immigration policies — policies that frighten many fans — on Monday denied entry to Somali referee Omar Artan, one of the 52 match officials assigned to the tournament.

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He takes this newspaper’s call on a train bound for Hamburg, home of St. Pauli, continues by car and says goodbye almost an hour later in his office at the headquarters of the modest club, which he has chaired since 2014. Oke Göttlich (Hamburg, Germany; 50) is also one of the 13 vice presidents of the DFB, the German Football Association. And earlier this year, amid threats from Donald Trump’s administration to invade Greenland, Göttlich, a trained journalist, said enough was enough. “What reasons justified the boycotts by certain countries of Olympic Games in the 1980s?” he asked, referring to Moscow 1980 and Los Angeles 1984, in the Hamburger Morgenpost. “In my view, the current threat is greater than back then, so we must have this discussion; a footballer’s life is not worth more than the life of any of the people being directly or indirectly attacked by the host country of the next World Cup.”

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