The World Cup has begun, but Azteca has no name

I sat in front of the screen to watch the Mexican Wave; after all, football is not just football... I wondered how the opening of the 23rd World Cup would be? 

Tribunal choreography, lights, concerts, anthems, flags... I wanted to focus on the aesthetics of football and share in the world's excitement today.

Following the magnificent opening, anthems were sung for the first match at Azteca, shoulder to shoulder, with children in the lead... 

Mexico's Azteca (Aztec) Stadium is hosting a World Cup opening match for the 3rd time.  In the first one, in 1970, the boots of Pele, the player who won the most World Cups, ran on this green pitch. Today, the stands where Mexican hats fly also witnessed Maradona's "Hand of God" goal in 1986.

Azteca Stadium is a historic venue that has hosted many firsts.

What is interesting is FIFA's "clean stadium" policy, which, due to official sponsorship agreements, requires stadiums to be referred to by their city names instead of their original names. For example, calling "Azteca" the "Mexico City Stadium." In other words, for FIFA, the name of "Azteca," the most important stadium in football history where the match is being played today, is just like a commercial name... 

I see this FIFA rule of not mentioning non-sponsor brand names as drifting away from history, from a city, and from football memory, reducing the stadium to just an address. 

I wish they would apply the same censorship to country names; isn't every country a brand? Or the players... Isn't everything a brand in the world today? 

It was a goal while I was thinking about these things. Mexico is in the lead... 

What I am doing cannot be called just watching a match; it is like thinking with football, once again about history, geography, and humanity... 

While I read that only city names will be used for stadiums due to FIFA standards, the commentator continues to describe it by saying, "At the Azteca Stadium..." 

It seems that even if a decision is made not to market non-sponsor brands, it is impossible to make that name invisible, which has settled into collective memories; created an emotion, a thought, and a meaning. 

Fortunately, like the commentator, we still have an untouchable area in our minds; sometimes history, sometimes a name, can wander there freely...

While thinking about brands, names, and history, I remember that the Aztecs, who also had a short-lived empire in the 14th and 15th centuries, called themselves "Mexica," not "Aztec." As the roar rising from the Azteca stands mingles with the sky, I extend time toward the Mayans.

Once upon a time in this geography, people were trying to understand time without taking their eyes off the stars. I go back to the Mayans, who recorded the movements of the sky 4,000 years ago and carved the rhythm of the heavens into stone. Today, time brings millions together for football on the same land, under the same sky.

I look at the stands just as the Mayans looked at the sky.

I encounter Spain for a moment. Spain, which erased the Aztecs from history, is the favorite of the cup; history is now in the distant pages of history...

As someone who has never supported a team and is distant from football, my first favorite is Turkey for emotional reasons, and then Spain, which could say, "If Israel is there, we are not."

I apply the policy that FIFA applies to non-sponsors to that country that cannot sponsor world peace. I want to use the word "America" today not as a country name, but as a continent, a geographical area: 

"After South Korea, our hearts are with you in America, Turkey" I say... Third place is not enough, this time the cup is in your hands.

We had become one heart as a whole country in 2002; I was on the road to Eastern Anatolia, in Erzurum, in Bayburt, we had stopped the tour bus and watched in village coffeehouses, dressed in red and white...

It wasn't just the "World Cup," it was as if the whole world was ours. 

Can we reunite and watch with the same excitement?

We said, "Football is not just football," let peace win for a new world on the new continent. Let the competition remain as a sport...