Ismael Kone’s serious-looking injury left Canada manager Jesse Marsch in tears and overshadowed their first-ever World Cup finals win as they thrashed nine-man Qatar 6-0.<\/p>\n
With the co-hosts already leading 3-0 in Vancouver and with a man advantage, Qatar’s Assim Omer Madibo and Kone both challenged for the ball, resulting in a lengthy stoppage and the Canadian being stretchered off.<\/p>\n
Madibo was originally shown a yellow card, but it was upgraded to a red after a video assistant referee (VAR) intervention. <\/p>\n
But with his name being chanted by the Canadian supporters, ex-Watford midfielder Kone was able to sit up and wave as he was carried around the side of the pitch on a stretcher while inhaling painkillers.<\/p>\n
Canada are now likely to reach the knockout rounds, but the injury to Kone is a huge blow to their prospects of a run beyond the last 32.<\/p>\n
The horrific injury marred what was otherwise a historic occasion for Canada.<\/p>\n
Cyle Larin opened the scoring with a poacher’s finish in the 16th minute, netting his second in as many games, before Jonathan David scored the first of his hat-trick 13 minutes later. <\/p>\n
Qatar were then shown the first of their two red cards as Homam El Amin was sent off for a professional foul on Tajon Buchanan in the 33rd minute.<\/p>\n
David netted his second in first-half added time.<\/p>\n
Kone’s injury overshadowed the second half: When Nathan Saliba curled in a free-kick to make it 4-0 in the 63rd minute, he held up the injured midfielder’s shirt – a gesture that was met by huge cheers from the crowd. <\/p>\n
Canada added a fifth with 15 minutes remaining as Mohammad Al Mannai sliced Jacob Shaffelburg’s effort into his own goal.<\/p>\n
David rounded off a superb hat-trick in stoppage time by latching on to Buchanan’s effort before driving beyond Mahmoud Abunada.<\/p>\n
Victory by a six-goal margin means Canada sit top of group B – level on points with Switzerland, but three goals better off. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ismael Kone’s serious-looking injury left Canada manager Jesse Marsch in tears and overshadowed their first-ever World Cup finals…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":646391,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-646390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646390","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=646390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646390\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/646391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=646390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=646390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=646390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}