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Tuesday, July 22, 2025

World Cup dismay for Qatar as Ecuador wins opening game

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975 days ago
Ecuador's Enner Valencia, right, celebrates after scoring his second goal during the World Cup, group A football match between Qatar and Ecuador at the Al Bayt Stadium in Al Khor on Sunday. He scored both goals in his team’s 2-0 victory. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

Ecuador's Enner Valencia, right, celebrates after scoring his second goal during the World Cup, group A football match between Qatar and Ecuador at the Al Bayt Stadium in Al Khor on Sunday. He scored both goals in his team’s 2-0 victory. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

Natacha Pisarenko

AL KHOR, Qatar (AP) — Qatar’s first ever World Cup match end­ed in dis­may for an over­matched team and with a place in un­want­ed soc­cer his­to­ry.

The con­tro­ver­sy-laced tour­na­ment opened Sun­day with Qatar get­ting out­played and em­bar­rassed in a 2-0 loss to Ecuador in front of 67,372 fans at Al Bayt Sta­di­um.

In 92 years of soc­cer’s biggest event, a host team had nev­er lost its open­ing game.

The first World Cup in the Mid­dle East is a chance for Qatar, a tiny Arab coun­try jut­ting out in­to the Per­sian Gulf, to show­case it­self to the wider world. Its soc­cer team, play­ing at this lev­el for the first time by virtue of host­ing the tour­na­ment, couldn't live up to the mo­ment as Ecuador cap­tain En­ner Va­len­cia scored both goals in the first half.

The match took place af­ter a col­or­ful 30-minute open­ing cer­e­mo­ny — front­ed by Os­car-win­ning ac­tor Mor­gan Free­man and at­tend­ed by pow­er­ful dig­ni­taries in­clud­ing Sau­di Ara­bi­an Crown Prince Mo­hammed bin Salman — that pro­mot­ed in­clu­siv­i­ty and mankind liv­ing “un­der one tent.”

For many, that would jar with this World Cup be­ing host­ing by an emi­rate where ho­mo­sex­u­al acts are il­le­gal, one that has come un­der strong crit­i­cism for how mi­grant work­ers have been treat­ed build­ing sta­di­ums and tour­na­ment in­fra­struc­ture since Qatar won the scan­dal-shroud­ed vote in 2010.

The years­long scruti­ny was nev­er go­ing to stop just be­cause play on the field fi­nal­ly en­tered the nar­ra­tive of a tour­na­ment dogged by hu­man rights con­tro­ver­sies, yet a win for the host na­tion would have at least put a fa­vor­able light on Qatar, soc­cer-wise.

In­stead, Qatar’s play­ers, fresh from spend­ing sev­en months to­geth­er in a pre-tour­na­ment train­ing camp un­der Span­ish coach Fe­lix Sanchez, froze in front of an ex­pec­tant crowd and a dis­ci­plined Ecuador team that might just pose a dan­ger to more high-pro­file op­po­nents over the next few weeks.

Va­len­cia thought he had scored in the third minute when he head­ed in from close range fol­low­ing an ac­ro­bat­ic cross from Fe­lix Tor­res. Af­ter a video re­view of about two min­utes, Ecuado­ri­an cel­e­bra­tions were cut short when the goal was ruled out for what ap­peared to be a mar­gin­al off­side.

Ecuador did take the lead, how­ev­er, in the 16th minute when Va­len­cia was tripped by Saad Al­sheeb af­ter round­ing the goal­keep­er, who was booked for the chal­lenge. Va­len­cia was non­cha­lant as he trot­ted up and con­vert­ed the spot kick in­to the bot­tom cor­ner.

The 33-year-old strik­er added his sec­ond in the 33rd by head­ing in a right-wing cross from An­ge­lo Pre­ci­a­do.

With Qatar’s pass­es of­ten go­ing astray and its de­fen­sive ragged­ness re­peat­ed­ly ex­posed, Ecuador had no prob­lem hold­ing on­to its lead as Sanchez stood help­less in his tech­ni­cal area and the home fans fell qui­et.

There were lots of emp­ty seats for a sec­ond half that was al­most a dam­age-lim­i­ta­tion ex­er­cise for Qatar.


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