A fierce battle was fought between the hosting nation, Qatar’s team, and La Tri, the national team from Ecuador, on November 20th during the first game of the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Leading to the Round of 16 matches, the teams are first split into eight groups where two of the four teams will move on.

Qatar is the smallest nation to host the World Cup and known to have extreme summer heat, making FIFA 2022 the first tournament that is not in May, June, or July. For such a grand event involving 32 national teams, Qatar built 7 brand new stadiums (and renovated the 8th) to host the matches. Their team now has the earliest exit of a hosting nation in history from losing their first two matches. Viewers and fans experience mixed feelings based on their team’s standing on leaderboards. Qataris are anguished by their team’s loss while Argentines are ecstatic to win against Mexico and Poland after their upsetting defeat against Saudi Arabia.

Early on in the matches top players have already been identified such as French centre-forward, Kylian Mbappé, and Netherland’s captain, Virgil van Dijk. Argentina’s soccer idol, Lionel Messi, treads closer to retirement after announcing that this will be his last World Cup.

In their opening game, Brazil’s fearsome forward player, Neymar da Silva Santos Jr., known as Neymar, needed immediate medical attention after his ankle was injured in an awkward tumble to the ground. A teammate of his in Paris Saint-Germain, Marquinhos, said about Neymar’s injury, “after the tests and the treatment, he is doing physiotherapy 24 hours a day which shows how much he wants to be back with us.” There has been no confirmation of Neymar’s return, but there is a lot of confidence that he will be back in the game soon.

Groups A-F have completed their matches against each other, and these are the national teams that have qualified for the Round of 16: Netherlands, Senegal, U.S.A., England, Argentina, Poland, France, Australia, Japan, Spain Morocco, Croatia.