World Cup opens with music, passion and Jennifer Lopez

Anyone who tuned in to the World Cup's opening ceremony hoping to learn precisely what a World Cup opening ceremony is for would have come away slightly disappointed. Unlike, say, Olympic opening ceremonies they are not supposed to be any kind of reflection on the host country.

Indeed, such parochialism would be downright frowned upon by today's World Cup mentality, considering that both the official anthem and slogan this time round is the typically Fifa-ishly nonsensical, and distinctly Benetton-esque, "We Are One".

As many have pointed out, the lead singers of the anthem this year, Pitbull and Jennifer Lopez, seem to have been chosen in the spirit of this kind of international unity, seeing as neither are actually Brazilian: Pitbull was born in the US to Cuban parents and Lopez, albeit originally From The Block, is also American with Puerto Rican parents. But we'll get back to that.

So perhaps it's best to think of the opening ceremony as the fluffer for the World Cup, and certainly some was needed in São Paulo this week which has been looking, as has been widely reported, albeit in possibly different terms, decidedly unfluffed.

On the very morning of the tournament's first game, 300 people gathered outside the ground to protest against the money lavished on football stadiums instead of things like people and schools, and were duly teargassed and shot with rubber bullets for their trouble. Meanwhile. inside the stadium, Fifa held a conference explaining how their only aim in their humble life was to establish world peace. One journalist asked with a commendably straight face if they expected to win the Nobel peace prize. Fifa solemnly considered the possibility. "This goes beyond football and beyond Fifa," intoned one of the Fifabots, sounding increasingly like Dr Strangelove. Meanwhile, reports came through that several journalists had been injured by police in the protest. Paging the Nobel peace prize committee!

So by the time the opening ceremony actually began, we could all only hope it would bring us good cheer and help us to stop having a "narrow focus", as the Fifabot put it, on dull things like poverty and widen our scope to football. Dazzle us with your 500 performers and 300 technicians, people cried! (Sports people love stats so stats were given in plenty.)

As is always the way with such things, it was essentially a large-scale version of Spirit of the Dance: dancers dressed in increasingly elaborate costumes re-enacted something which turned out to be an allegory for "the creation of the forest". Anyone who has ever seen It's a Small World at Walt Disney World would have felt a not wholly unpleasant shiver of deja vu. There was, apparently, a storyline about movement and creation and nobility in the Amazon but Lord knows why anyone ever bothers with storylines in such things, considering (a) they are utterly incomprehensible and (b) the only reasons people really watch is to coo at the cute children (of which there were plenty) and watch people on stilts fall over (of which there were none.) A personal highlight was when dancers pretended to be actual footballs and rolled around on the ground. Anyone who saw this as a metaphor for what Fifa has done to the actual Brazilian people is commanded to widen their focus.

And then, there was Jennifer Lopez! Emerging from the giant centre-stage flower, like the caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland. There had been a brief moment of panic when it was announced that Lopez would not be making the World Cup owing to unspecified "production issues". This may have been a realisation that the song she was to sing is an international laughing stock. Lopez then issued a correction, explaining, "I think people get anxious, especially with me and my schedule when I'm like, 'Ah, OK, I can leave this day, that day, I don't know if we can make it.' " Such a spontaneous gal, J-Lo. It must be a nightmare for her to sort an Ocado delivery.

She was joined by Pitbull and Brazilian singer Claudia Leitte, who was allowed to sing for approximately 30 seconds of the interminable song, We Are One. This song has been widely criticised for, on the one hand, being too Brazilian and, on the other, not being Brazilian enough. In regards to the former, critics say the music video relies too heavily on national stereotypes and old-fashioned rhythms. But to complain about an overuse of national stereotypes in international sport, let alone a Jennifer Lopez video, feels distinctly like reaching a little too hard for outrage (and let's hope these people didn't watch the opening ceremony with its recreation of the Amazon rainforest to capoeira dance moves).

The latter criticism refers to the fact that Lopez and Pitbull are not, in fact, Brazilian, unless you take the attitude of all Hollywood movies and say, simply, "Meh, aren't all Spanish people the same?" Again, hard to take this too seriously seeing as the much-beloved song from the last World Cup was performed by the distinctly un-South African Shakira. To be honest, there's no need to grapple for a reason to snark about We Are One – all anyone needs to do is state the obvious: it's a rubbish song.

And then, back down into the flower she went with Pitbull, leaving the pitch to the Amazonian dancers, the raindrops, trees and footballs, who humbly marched off. After all, once you've seen Pitbull, who needs the Amazon? So did the opening ceremony fluff São Paulo? Well, it certainly made everyone in the auditorium desperate – perhaps more desperate than they'd been in years – for the football to start. So on those terms, it was a roaring success.