Pope Leo XIV opened a prayer vigil at the Santiago Bernabéu this week and reached for the only word that made sense: golazo. It's the word excitable commentators scream when a goal transcends the ordinary — and it's also the only word that captures what the Estadio Azteca has been doing to football history for 60 years.
World Cup 2026 opens Thursday night in Mexico City. There was never going to be anywhere else.
The Azteca: where ghosts play rent-free
No stadium in this tournament carries more football mythology per square metre. The Azteca has hosted two World Cup finals — Brazil's 4-1 demolition of Italy in 1970, and Argentina's triumph in 1986. Pelé won his title there. Maradona scored both the most controversial and the most beautiful goals in World Cup history there, four minutes apart, in the same quarter-final against England.
Victor Hugo Morales lost his mind narrating the second one. "Thanks be to God for Maradona, for fútbol, for these tears," he roared. Forty years later, the bronze statue outside the ground still commemorates that goal. The ghosts aren't visiting the Azteca — they live there.
The 1970 semi-final alone would be enough to cement the stadium's legacy. West Germany versus Italy, 1-1 after ninety minutes, then five goals in extra time. Franz Beckenbauer played through a dislocated shoulder. Italy won 4-3 in what remains one of the finest matches in the tournament's history. The Azteca saw all of it.
For this edition, the stadium is officially rebranded — FIFA's sponsor rules strip corporate names from venues, so Estadio Banorte becomes Mexico City Stadium for the duration. A small price for the privilege of hosting the opening match of the world's biggest sporting event.
BMO Field: Cinderella gets her night
Then there's Toronto's BMO Field. Canada's opener is there Friday, which would have seemed absurd to anyone who watched it get built — a compact, no-frills MLS ground designed partly around the attendance concerns of the Toronto Argonauts. It is, by any honest measure, the least imposing venue in the entire tournament.
And yet here it is, hosting a World Cup match. FIFA's staging rules will briefly rename it Toronto Stadium, which at least sounds like something. The people who spent years arguing over its capacity could not have imagined this moment.
Vancouver's BC Place is a more comfortable fit — built for Expo '86, retrofitted for the 2010 Winter Olympics, retractable roof and real scale. Canada's other host city brings infrastructure that actually suits the occasion. BMO Field is the outlier, the anomaly, the stadium that should not be on this list and somehow is.
- Estadio Azteca (Mexico City): Two World Cup finals, Maradona's career condensed into a single match, opening game of 2026
- BC Place (Vancouver): Built for Expo '86, main venue for the 2010 Winter Olympics
- BMO Field (Toronto): The tournament's most unlikely host venue
- New York/New Jersey Stadium (MetLife): Hosts the final — two NFL tenants, WrestleMania twice, no football ghosts whatsoever
The final lands at MetLife in the Meadowlands, a few miles from Manhattan. A multi-purpose colossus that has hosted every kind of American spectacle except a World Cup. The 1994 final was played at the Rose Bowl in Los Angeles — a magnificent venue that witnessed a nil-nil draw settled on penalties. MetLife will need the match to do some heavy lifting.
The Azteca doesn't need anything. Sixty years in, it just needs another Thursday night.
