Cristiano Ronaldo scored his 139th and 140th international goals as Portugal thrashed Armenia 5-0 in their first match since the death of Diogo Jota in a car accident in July.<\/p>\n
A minute\u2019s silence was held before the World Cup qualifier in honour of Jota<\/a>, who won 49 caps for Portugal, and banners were on display around the Vazgen Sargsyan Republican Stadium in Yerevan.<\/p>\n Jo\u00e3o F\u00e9lix opened the scoring in the 10th minute before Ronaldo doubled their lead when he converted Pedro Neto\u2019s cross. Jo\u00e3o Cancelo celebrated his goal to make it 3-0 by mimicking Jota\u2019s video game celebration.<\/p>\n The 40-year-old Ronaldo extended Portugal\u2019s lead to four shortly after half-time with a stunning strike of a bouncing ball from distance, while his Al-Nassr teammate F\u00e9lix added a second of his own to complete the scoring.<\/p>\n Armenia\u2019s goalkeeper, Henri Avagyan, can get nowhere near Cristiano Ronaldo\u2019s stunning second. Photograph: Hakob Berberyan\/AP<\/p>\n Adam Idah came off the bench to earn the Republic of Ireland a point from a dramatic 2-2 draw against 10-man Hungary in their opening qualifier.<\/p>\n The Swansea striker\u2019s header in the third minute of injury time made it 2-2 after Ireland had fought their way back from 2-0 down to stave off defeat.<\/p>\n Ireland\u2019s opening Group F fixture got off to a nightmare start when Barnabas Varga and Roland Sallai, who was later dismissed, scored inside the first 15 minutes.<\/p>\n The Roma striker Evan Ferguson reduced the deficit from close range early in the second half and Sallai\u2019s premature departure, after a late challenge on Dara O\u2019Shea, left the technically more gifted Hungarians under siege.<\/p>\n They almost managed to see out time but Idah intervened late on to keep Heimir Hallgrimsson\u2019s team on an even keel in the race for second place behind Portugal.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Football Daily<\/p>\n Kick off your evenings with the Guardian’s take on the world of football<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Serbia kept up their hopes of catching England in Group K with a 1-0 win against Latvia in Riga. Dusan Vlahovic scored the decisive goal in the 12th minute, slotting the ball past Krisjanis Zviedris from outside the penalty area.<\/p>\n Dragan Stojkovic\u2019s side are five points behind the group leaders, England, with the two teams meeting in Belgrade on Tuesday.<\/p>\n In the African section of World Cup qualifying, Nigeria live to fight another day after beating Rwanda 1-0. Tolu Arokodare, who completed a move from Genk to Wolves on transfer deadline day, scored an acrobatic 50th-minute winner after coming off the bench.<\/p>\n Defeat for Nigeria in Uyo would have finished off their chances of qualifying for the World Cup but the victory moves them to within six points of the group leaders, South Africa, and five points behind second-place Benin with three games to go. Group winners qualify automatically for the finals in North America next summer, with second place heading into intercontinental playoffs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cristiano Ronaldo scored his 139th and 140th international goals as Portugal thrashed Armenia 5-0 in their first match…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":120068,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-120067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120067\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}