Brazil are celebrating as the first South American team to qualify for the FIFA World Cup in Qatar — with several matches in hand and more than a year before the tournament begins.
Neymar on Thursday set up Lucas Paqueta in the 72nd minute to give Brazil a 1-0 win against Colombia in Sao Paulo.
The victory was the Selecao’s 11th in 12 matches of qualifiers, putting them 18 points ahead of Chile and Colombia in fourth and fifth respectively with 16 points. They can add a maximum of 15 points each from their five remaining games.
Photo: AP
The top four teams in South America earn direct entry to the World Cup.
Celebrations at the Neo Quimica Arena were discreet on the pitch after a hard-fought match with little inspiration from either side.
However, the party gained traction in the Brazil dressing room as players waved a Qatari flag and chanted, with FIFA and South American soccer body CONMEBOL joining to congratulate the first team from the region to secure a place in next year’s World Cup.
Photo: Reuters
Hosts Qatar, Germany and Denmark had already done that.
“This is the result of great work we started way back,” Paqueta said after the match, which provided few opportunities.
“I cried of happiness [after scoring the goal] because of this moment I am living at the national team and at my club [Olympique Lyonnais]. This came from a lot of joy, joy for this work well done,” he said.
Photo: AFP
His goal came after Marquinhos found Neymar in the middle of the Colombia defense.
Neymar quickly passed to Paqueta, who beat goalkeeper David Ospina with a low, crossed shot that ended in the right corner of the Colombia goal.
Ospina’s touch was not enough to stop the ball from going in.
It was one of the few chances created by Brazil during the match.
Asked about the team’s future now that the spot in Qatar is sealed, Brazil coach Tite said he would seek “solidity, creativity, goals and victories” until the World Cup begins.
“That is excellency. That is what moves us. We need to get as close to that as we can,” Tite told a news conference. “We will celebrate a little tomorrow to mark this moment.”
Brazil sealed their qualification by giving Tite his 50th win along with 12 draws and five defeats.
In other games on Thursday, third-place Ecuador beat last-place Venezuela 1-0 with a goal by Piero Hincapie.
Chile had a key 1-0 victory against Paraguay thanks to an own-goal by Antony Silva after a corner.
Peru defeated Bolivia 3-0 with goals by Gianluca Lapadula, Christian Cueva and Sergio Pena.
ANFIELD BLUES: Kylian Mbappe arrived at Anfield on a run of 21 goals in 17 games, but he managed just three attempts in the match, none of them hitting the target Kylian Mbappe has been nearly unstoppable this season, but he hit a roadblock in their UEFA Champions League match at Anfield on Tuesday. For the second year running, the Real Madrid forward had a night to forget at Merseyside as Liverpool won 1-0. Mbappe looked a shadow of the player who has been tearing defenses apart all season. “We were lacking that threat in the final third,” said Madrid coach Xabi Alonso, without naming Mbappe individually. The FIFA World Cup winner for France rarely looked capable of finding a breakthrough against a Liverpool team who have been so defensively fragile for much of the
LOCAL SUCCESS: In the doubles, Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei and Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia defeated Italians Sara Errani and Jasmine Paolini in straight sets Elena Rybakina on Monday punched her ticket to the WTA Finals last four with an impressive 3-6, 6-1, 6-0 victory over second seed Iga Swiatek in round-robin play in Riyadh. After cruising past Amanda Anisimova in her opener on Saturday, Rybakina claimed her second win of the week to guarantee herself top spot in the Serena Williams Group. Anisimova on Monday rallied back from a set and a break down to triumph 4-6, 6-3, 6-2 in her all-American battle with seventh seed Madison Keys, who has been eliminated from the competition. “Madi was playing so well, it was quite a battle out there,”
For almost 30 minutes, Vitomir Maricic did not take a breath. Face down in a pool, surrounded by anxious onlookers, the Croatian freediver fought spasming pain to redefine what doctors thought was possible. When he finally surfaced, he had smashed the previous Guinness World Record for the longest breath-hold underwater by nearly five minutes. However, even with the help of pure oxygen before the attempt, it had pushed him to the limit. “Everything was difficult, just overwhelming,” Maricic, 40, told reporters, reflecting on the record-breaking day on June 14. “When I dive, I completely disconnect from everything, as if I’m not even there.
An amateur soccer league organized by farmers, students and factory workers in rural China has unexpectedly drawn millions of fans and inspired big cities to form their own, raising hopes China can grow talent from the ground up and finally become a global force. The nation of 1.4 billion people has about 200 million soccer fans, more than any other country, but it has failed to build world-class teams, partly due to a top-down approach where clubs pick players from a very small pool of prescreened candidates. The professional game is marred by a history of fixed matches, corruption, and dismal performances,
RSS