[Picture by Associated Press]
Here’s ex-BBC reporter Matt Slater’s (somewhat irreverant) summary of the opening match. He writes for The Athletic.
Ecuador were all over Qatar, who have spent the past six months in camp together, training like a club side. A League Two club side by the looks of it.
Valencia would get his goal after 16 minutes when he went around Al Sheeb, only to be felled by a textbook tap tackle. There was to be no reVARsal of this decision and the 33-year-old, now with Fenerbahce in Turkey, picked himself up and tucked his penalty away. The watching Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan would have enjoyed that.
Ecuador’s night got better on 31 minutes, when Qatar’s stage-frightened defenders fluffed another clearance — right-back Angelo Preciado put the ball in the mixer and Valencia’s forehead did the rest.
That, in terms of the football, was pretty much that. Ecuador 2, Qatar 0.
My footnotes:
League Two is the third and lowest division of the English Football League (EFL), below League One, which is below Championshop League.
Valencia is Ecuadorian professional footballer Enner Valencia (33).
Al Sheeb is Saad Abdullah al-Sheeb (32), the Qatari goalkeeper.
Tap tackle is to dive at the other player’s feet and, with an outstretched arm, deliver a tap or hook to the player’s foot (or feet) causing the player to stumble.
VAR stands for Video Assistant Referee, a match official who reviews decisions made by the referee on video.
Fenerbache is Fenerbahçe Spor Kulübü, a Turkish professional football club based in Istanbul, Turkey.
Mixer a way of describing the penalty area, the box, especially when it is crowded with players.