Venue One is officially live! The 2022 Qatar World Cup Is also now underway, with the matches so far indicating this will not be a tournament you want to miss for a second!
Qatar vs Ecuador
In the very first match of the 1st round, Qatar suffered somewhat of a significant beating at the hands of Ecuador, losing the match 2–0 to the South American side. Enner Valencia almost scored a hat-trick with 3 goals, but his first goal was overturned by VAR decision.
The great performance by Enner Valencia even won the player the first Man of the Match award!!
This means that Qatar are the 1st hosts of the World Cup to lose their opening game of the tournament! Valencia’s amazing performance also means he is now the all-time top goal scorer for Ecuador! With a grand total of 38 goals!
England vs Iran
Following the thrilling previous game of Qatar vs Ecuador, England succeeded in thrashing the Iran side with their best ever performance in an opening world cup game, achieving a huge 6–2 victory against the Iran side! This game was also full of thrilling twists and turns, with the main Iranian goalkeeper Ali Beiranvand sustaining a serious injury in the first few minutes and having to be substituted as a result.
The young rising star Jude Bellingham managed to put England in the lead 35 minutes in, with an amazing header into the goal. England managed to net 5 entirely more goals after Bellingham’s opener, with 2 goals from the young Arsenal star Bukayo Saka, along with goals from Sterling, Rashford and Jack Grealish.
Iran managed to claw some glory back to their side in the 2nd half, with Mehdi Taremi achieving 2 goals, one being from a penalty in overtime. This means England (as of the 22nd November 9:30 AM UK GMT time) is now leading its current group!
Argentina vs Saudi Arabia
Our first unexpected shocker of the tournament has come in the form of Saudi Arabia’s opening match against Argentina, with the Saudis narrowly managing to beat Messi’s side despite all odds. The match started with the Argentinian side to repeatedly have goals disallowed that needed VAR system confirmation to be disallowed.
Despite this, Messi managed to score a penalty he himself won in the 10th minute, putting the Argentinians one up against the Saudi side. However, the Argentinian side began to show increased weakness in the 2nd half, eventually conceding two amazingly finished goals by Saleh Alshehri and Salem Aldawsari, which eventually led to a Saudi surprise victory against a team who had gone unbeaten for its previous 36 matches!
Check out the match stats below:
Honorable mention
European powerhouse, Spain, defeated Costa Rica 7–0 to start their campaign in this year’s FIFA World Cup in Qatar on Wednesday evening (November 23). Spain broke 2 World Cup records. The highest percentage of possession in a World Cup game since 1966 (81.3%). Most successful passes in the 1st half of a World Cup game since 1966 (537).
Upcoming games
Already, there have been two significant upsets, including perhaps the greatest World Cup upset ever. Tuesday saw Saudi Arabia defeat Argentina 2–1 after coming from behind. After that, Japan defeated Germany the following day by the same margin. These results make the upcoming matches of Argentina-Mexico (26/11, 19:00 UTC) and Spain-Germany (27/11, 19:00 UTC) to be highly anticipated by football fans all over the world.
Group Standings
Check all group standings, and our platform, current, winning probabilities for each group.
Group B
