Algeria fought back to eliminate debutants Jordan from the World Cup and keep their own knockout hopes alive in San Francisco.<\/p>\n
Jordan were organised in defence against an Algeria side who dominated possession – and the underdogs took a first-half lead when Nizar Al Rashdan curled home.<\/p>\n
But Algeria piled on the pressure after the break and Nadhir Benbouali headed home an equaliser from Riyad Mahrez’s 69th-minute corner. <\/p>\n
Amine Gouiri then netted an 82nd-minute winner for Algeria to deny Jordan their first World Cup point.<\/p>\n
Al Rashdan flashed a header wide of the near post inside 60 seconds but Algeria then took charge and Gouiri dragged a low shot wide while Fares Chaibi had a low shot blocked from Ibrahim Maza’s cut-back.<\/p>\n
Mahrez, making his first World Cup start since 2014, nearly broke the deadlock after being released by a long ball over the top, but he was denied by Yazeed Abulaila.<\/p>\n
And it was Jordan who took a 36th-minute lead through Al Rashdan’s tidy finish with the outside of his right foot, after Algeria’s Ramiz Zerrouki had given the ball away cheaply.<\/p>\n
After the break Abulaila parried a fierce 25-yard shot from Maza and saved a header from Benbouali, while Jordan’s Noor Al Rawabdeh curled inches wide from the edge of the box at the other end.<\/p>\n
But Algeria finally equalised when Benbouali glanced a downward header into the corner – and then Gouiri clinched the win when he hooked home a bouncing ball after another inswinging corner broke to him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Algeria fought back to eliminate debutants Jordan from the World Cup and keep their own knockout hopes alive…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":755387,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-755386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/755386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=755386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/755386\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/755387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=755386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=755386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=755386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}