Qatar vs Ecuador LIVE: World Cup 2022 result, final score and reaction as Enner Valencia double downs hosts

The opening fixture of the 2022 World Cup kicks off at 4pm this afternoon as Qatar host Ecuador in the Al Bayt Stadium.

The opening ceremony of the 2022 World Cup has begun. It starts with a fancy promo vid as all the lights inside the stadium go dark.

Morgan Freeman is doing the narration for the video.

A century has passed since the World Cup’s founding father, Jules Rimet, assumed Fifa’s presidency and began setting the wheels in motion for the first tournament in 1930. Even a visionary like Rimet would have struggled to imagine the immense success and global pull that the tournament would command a hundred years later, but it is not hard to guess what he would have thought about the 22nd World Cup in Qatar.

Rimet came from humble beginnings as the son of a grocer in a tiny village in eastern France, and he climbed the class ladder by winning a scholarship to law school. His beliefs were simple: that football should be global and inclusive, fair and respectful. In a small Parisian cafe, he co-founded a sports club called Red Star based on those principles of cooperation and equality. Red Star were rare in that they did not discriminate based on social status and included working-class players, and their football team still cherishes those roots closely today.

As a devout Catholic, Rimet was inspired by Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum, a letter issued in the aftermath of the industrial revolution, which set out the principles of basic workers’ rights. It was in part a doctrine against exploitation and one that resonates as strongly with 1920s France as it does the 2022 World Cup; what is exploitation if not the transformation of workers’ sweat and blood into someone else’s wealth or power? The World Cup’s origins started from a man who fought against class structure, and a century later the tournament kicks off in one of the most structured, racially divided class systems in the world, where many thousands of south Asian labourers are at the bottom of a brutally unequal society run by a few unfathomably rich sheikhs.

On Sunday at Al Bayt Stadium, Gianni Infantino will be more than willing to share the spotlight with the Emir of Qatar, but it isn’t a privilege the newly re-elected Fifa president affords many. Take a story from a few weeks ago. With the World Cup 2022 so close, the Lisbon-based Web Summit wanted both Arsene Wenger and Infantino to come and do a talk. Negotiations broke down for a few reasons, but one element raises a chuckle from those with knowledge of the talks. There was a request for Infantino to have a more prominent speaking slot than Wenger.

The story does tally with a common refrain from a lot of people you speak to about Infantino.

“It’s all about him.”

There was then whatever that World Cup opening press conference was. Infantino surpassed himself as well as Sepp Blatter with a cascade of frankly astonishing statements. The Fifa president attempted a statesman’s address but essentially just showed why the game is in the state it is. You could joke it was the biggest miss to open a World Cup since Diana Ross’s penalty, except the truth is so many of the issues he blithely glossed over are so serious, from the conditions of migrant workers to LGBTQ+ concerns in Qatar.

England get their World Cup campaign under way against Iran on Monday.

Ahead of the Group B clash at the Khalifa International Stadium, we take a closer look at the Three Lions’ first opponents in Qatar:

Gabriel Martinelli has watched previous World Cups surrounded by a festival atmosphere and his extended family – this year however he is aiming to be the cause of their celebrations.

The 21-year-old Arsenal forward was a surprise selection in the Brazil squad for the 2022 finals, even if he is enjoying a fine season for the Gunners.

His five goals and two assists have helped Arsenal to lead the Premier League by five points heading into the break for the World Cup.

But instead of training with his club-mates he is in Qatar to try and help Brazil win the tournament for a record sixth time.

The shirt Pele wore in Wales’ last match in a World Cup ended up being used by a Sunday league pub team in Swansea. It may have cost Mel Charles, the defender who swapped shirts with the 17-year-old in Gothenburg, a small fortune in latter years when such memorabilia would have been valuable; as it was, Charles, who played in era when the maximum wage was £20 a week, could not afford a new kit for the amateur side he managed and so reached into his stash of former international shirts.

Should, say, Joe Rodon or Chris Mepham end up with Lionel Messi’s top in a potential quarter-final in December, it is unlikely to meet with a similar fate. But it is one illustration of how times have changed since Wales last graced the global stage. In 1958, 25 percent of the teams were the Home Nations; there was a British pot in the draw.

And if that ensured they could not face each other in the group stage then, now, as in Euro 2016, Wales are pooled with England. They topped that pool on their way to the semi-finals and a small country have shown they can go a long way: Wales have escaped the group stage in 1958, 2016 and Euro 2020.

When Qatar hit rock bottom, it might have been an irrelevant detail. Until, a few weeks in 2010 after they reached their lowest world ranking of 113th, they were awarded the 2022 World Cup. If much of the focus in the subsequent 12 years has concerned the off-field issues that rendered Qatar a controversial choice as hosts, on the pitch they risked embarrassment.

When they kick off against Ecuador on Sunday, it is with an altogether better pedigree. Qatar have won their last five games, albeit against teams who have not qualified for the World Cup. For the first time, they won the Asian Cup in 2019. They were Gold Cup semi-finalists in 2021. As the Qatari league paused in September, they have had longer to prepare than anyone else. Some of it has been spent at a training camp in Marbella. Some of their summer involved playing friendlies against European club sides.

“Qatar go into this tournament with an organised and well-drilled squad who are familiar with the stadiums, heat and landscape of the country,” noted Neil McGuinness, who previously worked for the Qatar FA and Aspire Academy on the identification and selection of players ahead of the World Cup.

The joy of football is complicated this time. Not just because the World Cup is happening in the wrong season, but because it is being staged in the wrong place.

We have known that ever since the decision to award the tournament to Qatar was taken, but what is significant is that the human rights groups that have protested against the Qatari government’s abuses have never called for a boycott. They hoped that the international attention paid to Qatar would help drive reform.

So it has, to an extent more limited than The Independent would have wished. As David Harding, our international editor, writes, changes have been announced – but they have not necessarily been enforced.

Aaron Ramsey says Gary Speed convinced him that Wales would qualify for the World Cup one day.

Speed set the target of World Cup qualification for Wales’ group of talented young players before his tragic death at the age of 42 in 2011.

Wales were ranked 112th in the world when Qatar was awarded the World Cup in 2010 and playing at the tournament then seemed like wishful thinking for long-suffering Dragons supporters.

But Ramsey, who Speed appointed captain at the age of 20, said: “Gary had this way about him that you would believe anything he would say.”