By the time this article is published on Salon, the opening match of the 2022 World Cup tournament will have reached halftime. That match is between teams from Qatar and Ecuador, two nations whose citizens — at least before this week — might have had difficulty finding the other one on a world map. (UPDATE: Just to prove I'm paying attention, Ecuador dominated from beginning to end, winning 2-0. Many Qatari fans left before the game was over, not exactly an encouraging sign.)
That is without doubt the most random and least star-powered opener in World Cup history; even hardcore soccer nerds would be stretched to name more than one or two players on either team. (Qatar almost certainly would not have qualified if it weren't the host nation, and Ecuador is the lowest-ranked Western Hemisphere team in this year's tournament.)
