BREAKING NEWS: Sports: Qatar's Dream Turns To Nightmare

 

Inner Valencia, the goal scorer in middle

After the controversies and conjecture, a football was finally kicked in the Qatar World Cup, 12 years on from being named as hosts.

A day that began with real excitement with the opening ceremony, Qatar's dream turned into a nightmare as they became the first hosts in the competition's history to lose their opening game.

The Asian champions, a tournament they won back in 2019, offered no threat in the final third and were unable to test Ecuador goalkeeper Hernan Galindez once.

South Africa have been the only hosts not to make it out of the group in 2010, but Qatar could follow as the second with two difficult games left to play.

Ecuador, meanwhile, have set themselves up in a superb position to progress, extending their excellent recent form to one defeat in 16 games and keeping a clean sheet in their last seven.

They were clearly the better side and had the ball in the back of the net after 160 seconds, but Valencia's close range header was ruled for offside by VAR.

There was confusion as to why the goal did not stand, but Felix Torres' initial challenge with the goalkeeper fell to Michael Estrada in an offside position.

Ecuador were all over Qatar, whose goalkeeper Al Sheeb was particularly shaky and he brought down Valencia, who coolly rolled in the penalty.

Qatar barely had a sniff and their first shot came in anger when defender Abdelkarim Hassan strode forward but his effort from range was blazed wildly over.

Star man Ali, who scored nine goals in the Asian Cup triumph, struggled to get into the game and headed wide, while Pedro Miguel headed did the same in the second half.

With much of the crowd already leaving to go home, Akram Afif and substitute Mohammed Muntari both smashed over to bring to an end a disappointing opening evening for Qatar.

The match ended with two goals to nill against the host nation Qatar.