MUNICH, 10 June 2006 — The 2006 World Cup got under way yesterday with a colorful ceremony celebrating football lore and the 32 nations taking part in the globe’s biggest single sporting event.
From a stage at Munich’s dazzling new stadium, German President Horst Koehler declared the start of the championship’s 18th edition since 1930, an hour before Costa Rica and hosts Germany faced off in the opening game before a capacity crowd of 66,000.
“We’re off at last,” Koehler told the cheering crowd, welcoming fans and players at the month-long tournament for football’s biggest prize.
“You are among friends,” said Koehler, flanked by German great and World Cup chief organizer Franz Beckenbauer and Joseph Blatter, head of the sport’s world governing body, FIFA. “May football be a bridge between nations,” said Koehler, appealing for fair play at the tournament.
Despite the feel-good atmosphere, thousands of German police mounted an all-out security operation at the Munich stadium. Spectators had to pass through metal detectors on the way to their seats, while X-ray machine scanned their bags. Many fans gathered in the southern city’s picturesque plazas hours before the game, cheering their teams in good spirits. In a Bavarian-themed extravaganza, 182 drum-bearing men in lederhosen filled the pitch for the welcoming ceremony, performing a thigh-slapping polka to cheers from a crowd including German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Young men and boys rattled huge cowbells, followed by a hip-hop band and the arrival of the golden World Cup trophy — carried to the stage by football legend Pele and German supermodel Claudia Schiffer, flanked by a boy in lederhosen and a girl in traditional Bavarian dress. But the biggest cheer at the opening went to Beckenbauer — Germany’s favorite son known as the “Kaiser,” the only person to have won the World Cup both as a team captain and a coach.
