AL RAYYAN, Qatar (AP) — An­oth­er fa­vored team has failed to im­press in the ear­ly stages of the World Cup.

This time it was South Ko­rea hold­ing South Amer­i­can pow­er Uruguay to a 0-0 draw on Thurs­day, a re­sult that prob­a­bly fa­vors the Asian team.

The draw at Ed­u­ca­tion City Sta­di­um was yet an­oth­er ear­ly World Cup match with a sur­pris­ing re­sult. Ar­genti­na and Ger­many both lost their open­ing games in ma­jor up­sets. This one hint­ed at be­ing an­oth­er.

Uruguay coach Diego Alon­so said he was sat­is­fied, and so did South Ko­rea coun­ter­part Paulo Ben­to. Alon­so sound­ed less con­vinc­ing.

“I'm more than hap­py with the re­sult,” Alon­so said. “I'm sure that this group stage will be de­ter­mined by the last match. We all know the sec­ond game is key, and so is the third one. But this will not af­fect whether we qual­i­fy of not.”

Uruguay will next face Por­tu­gal in Group H while South Ko­rea plays Ghana, with both games on Mon­day. The top two teams in the group will ad­vance to the round of 16.

South Ko­rea, with for­ward Son He­ung-min wear­ing a mask to pro­tect a bro­ken left eye sock­et, al­ways looked the more like­ly to score against the more ex­pe­ri­enced Uruguayans. The South Ko­re­ans were quick­er, press­ing from the open­ing whis­tle.

Many South Ko­re­an fans wore Bat­man-like masks in sol­i­dar­i­ty with Son, who was in­jured on Nov. 2 in a Cham­pi­ons League match play­ing for Eng­lish club Tot­ten­ham. He had a few ear­ly chances but seemed to tire in the sec­ond half.

“He (Son) had a se­ri­ous in­jury,” Ben­to said. "He was in­ac­tive for a con­sid­er­able amount of time. He could on­ly get back with the team in the re­cent days. And of course it's nat­ur­al af­ter an in­jury that it will take time some time to adapt. But I think over­all we had a good per­for­mance.”

In a match with few clear scor­ing chances and South Ko­rea of­ten in con­trol, Uruguay had the best op­por­tu­ni­ties to score: Diego Godin hit the post with a head­er in the 43rd minute and Fed­eri­co Valverde hit it in the 89th.

Alon­so start­ed an at­tack­ing line­up with Luis Suarez, Dar­win Nunez and Fa­cun­do Pel­listri up front, and with Valverde and Ma­tias Ve­ci­no in mid­field. But they sel­dom had the ball at the start.

South Ko­rea pressed for­ward ear­ly and Son ex­cit­ed the crowd every time he touched the ball, but he man­aged on­ly one threat­en­ing at­tack in the first half. South Ko­rea al­ways looked quick­er than Uruguay, but not nec­es­sar­i­ly the more dan­ger­ous. The team’s best chance came in the 34th minute when Hwang Ui-jo sailed a close-range at­tempt over the cross­bar.

As the sec­ond half wore on, Uruguay be­gan to take more pos­ses­sion but al­ways seemed cau­tious, tak­ing less ini­tia­tive de­spite hav­ing the more ex­pe­ri­enced play­ers.

Son went down in a heap ear­ly in the sec­ond half with Mar­tin Cac­eres get­ting the first yel­low card of the match.

Alon­so sent in Edin­son Ca­vani for Suarez in 64th minute as the pace of the match slowed un­til Valverde hit the post in the fi­nal min­utes.

“In the first 20 min­utes, we strug­gled against Ko­rea," Alon­so said. "We couldn’t take the ball from them. We couldn’t get any pres­sure and lost pre­ci­sion.

"Ob­vi­ous­ly, the sec­ond half we dom­i­nat­ed much more. We were bet­ter than them, I think, but we lacked a bit of at­tack­ing. I mean at­tack­ing more. We tried to be more com­pet­i­tive, too.”