Qatar 0 Ecuador 2: Hosts downed by Enner Valencia double as horror first 45 minutes silences half-empty Al Bayt Stadium
ASIDE from the corruption, the human rights abuses, the deaths of thousands of migrant workers and the switch to winter, here’s another reason why Qatar shouldn’t be hosting the World Cup…
They are really, really bad at football.
The controversial host nation, who have never qualified for a World Cup, were embarrassed on their big night out in a one-sided opener which should have ended with a harsher scoreline.
Instead of a lavish opening ceremony before kick-off, they might as well have just played the theme to the Muppet Show instead.
This was a truly painful watch - the Qataris passing was hopeless, their defending negligent, their tackling recklessly inept and their goalkeeper shambolic.
The match was played out in long stretches of silence, with thousands of locals seemingly leaving the Al Bayt Stadium in disgust at half-time.
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There is little footballing culture in this tiny nation, with most locals preferring camel racing and falconry, and this curtain-raiser proved yet again that the brown-envelope brigade who awarded hosting rights to Qatar have done the game a major disservice.
Qatar became the first host nation ever to lose their opening match at a World Cup and there is precious little chance of them avoiding a similar fate against Holland and Senegal.
Of course, it was not the fault of Qatar’s players that they had been awarded a ticket to the greatest sporting show on Earth - but, despite years of painstaking preparation, they looked like a bunch of raffle winners.
The opening ceremony - which included Morgan Freeman, camels, lightsabers, topless drummers and England’s World Cup Willie among a host of previous World Cup mascots - wasn’t great, but it ended up being the highlight of the evening.
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Qatar would have been 3-0 down after half-an-hour, but for some officiating which initially seemed to underline conspiracy theories about the bent-as-a-nine-bob-note nature of this whole event.
Ecuador’s former West Ham striker Enner Valencia was denied by a third-minute opener by a robot linesman - only to open the scoring from the penalty spot on 14 minutes and head a second on the half-hour.
It was a nightmare start for Qatari keeper Saad Al Sheeb, who twice flapped horribly at a Pervis Estupinan free-kick, before Felix Torres hooked spectacularly across goal for Valencia to head in - only for a flag-waving R2:D2 to claim an offside against Michael Estrada.
There was no escape for Qatar soon after, when Valencia was sent clean through and brought down by the hapless Al Sheeb, the ex-Hammer calmly slotting home himself - with Al Sheeb, predictably, going the wrong way.
With the Qataris committing a catalogue of schoolboy errors, Valencia added his second when he was afforded a free header at the back stick to nod home a deep centre from Angelo Preciado.
At least we had some amusing half-time entertainment as the Aussie stooge doing the PA duties claimed we had witnessed an "even battle in the middle of the park".
If that extraordinary statement was designed to stop a half-time exodus, it didn’t work.
Renato Ibarra forced one decent save out of Al Sheeb but Ecuador almost seemed to lose interest in adding to their tally, with skipper Valencia withdrawn to save energy for the proper battles ahead.
There was almost a minor sensation late on, when Qatar sub Mohammed Muntari fired a spectacular effort onto the roof of the net.
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But, when thousands of empty seats remained empty as the second half dragged on, there were false suggestions in the media box that many of the locals had gone away to pray.
"No," one Qatari journalist corrected us, "they’ve just gone."
