What you should know about FIFA - that's the football World Cup, which you didn't bother to watch last night, but want to sound smart about, at the office water-cooler today. Yes, Express has your FOMOF covered. That's Fear of Missing Out (on) Football, silly. Here's your name-dropping check-list for Day 1, November the Twentieth, Qatar vs Ecuador: 1. Enner Valencia. We know it's de rigeuer to think of EVs as electric vehicles, and you are upto scratch on the sustainability and fuel saving yak. But if it's Day 1 of football that's being chitter and chatted, EV is Enner Valencia, captain of Ecuador who scored twice (thrice almost), in the opener against Qatar. Here's Mihir Vasavda's primer in the Express on the man who strapped on an oxygen mask fleeing the cops once. However, on Matchday Uno, he was the dazzling star of Ecuador's 2-0 win, trashing all talk of a fixed match. That's after he was denied the opening goal in under six minutes, through a debatable offside (more on that in Point 3). Now not only was Valencia hacked down for a penalty, then headed in the second and then Qatar went at him once more to leave him hobbling - such was the desperately shambolic defense - but he happily ended the stat of host nations winning the opening days. Yes, that's the stat you *don't drop* since everyone else knows of it by now. But what you can share in your WA groups is Valencia being photoshopped into the famous LV chess case advert of Messi and Ronaldo by his cheeky little club, Fenerbahce. Not just that, perhaps the first World Cup after memes properly exploded as a phenom, has one of Valencia - 'Enner Goatica' - meeting Messi, captioned 'Goat meets Messi'. There is ofcourse a bearded goat silhouette shadow of his, and a few others that you can Google yourself. I mean, who misses out on the opening match of FIFA?! https://twitter.com/asapharun/status/1594367892304560129?s=20&t=IgCb7DTQEOJknNnRkvbV1A https://twitter.com/russmentheus/status/1594367657268084737?s=20&t=IgCb7DTQEOJknNnRkvbV1A 2. Felix Torres This one should really consolidate your FIFAffing smartly cred. This ain't trivia that boring geeky quizmasters will file away. *This* you know, only if you watched. Unblinking. That guy whose acrobatic whirl of a hook pass set up the headed (non-goal) for Enner Valencia, is Ecuador's centre back Felix Torres. Now, Felix Torres is always in the thick of things. Though the goal was disallowed, it set the tone, and properly rattled the Qatar goalkeeper. Currently registered with Mexican side Santos Laguna, Torres has spent time away from indiscipline and also left in tears after being racially abused. Part of the Ecuador team that played the U20 World Cup in South Korea in 2017, the highly rated centre back spent the next two years at Barcelona Sporting Club - incidentally Ecuador's top club in the top division based out of Guayaquil before playing in Mexico. Which is not to be mistaken with the Catalans in Spain. Stern manager Guillermo Almada at Ecuadorian Barcelona, had sanctioned Torres for "a very serious mistake" of arriving two days late." Almada added: "He lent the shirt and is paying the consequences. If I forgive Félix, surely I will not contribute to his learning, it has cost him quite dearly." He also quipped that if Torres sorted out that bit, north of his shoulders, he could prive quite formidable. While at Laguna, Torres was racially abused by a ball boy during his team's 1-0 defeat at Atletico San Luis in Mexico's Liga MX in what was a severe incident. Torres cried after the match, hurt at being attacked. "What happened today cannot continue to happen. I was sent off for words that hurt too much. It's affected me and I'm sad. My teammates are not bothered by the colour of my skin, they like me as I am. They know the person I am and the pain that I'm going through right now," he was quoted saying, by ESPN. While he remains at Mexico, and came into the Ecuador side after Copa America, his presence is said to have propped them both in the air in defense and in the penalty area - hence that 4D acrobatic hook. But it was his quickness over the ground during that spoke wheeled kick pass that sent the early shudders in the Qatari defense and drew out Saad Al Sheeb. Big, physically strong and quick, Torres is the sort of player why Premiership clubs are excited about Ecuador, though Arsenal have stacked up on the other one - Hincapie. 3. SAOT This is right up your alley - mindless acronyms for software code that noone outside your office cares about. But in FIFA-speak it stands for Semi-automated offside technology, which debuted at this tournament. SAOT (pronounced S-A-O-T, duh) uses a dozen cameras positioned around those swanky new stadiums (which you didn't watch) to track players’ bodies, when deciding if there was atleast one defender ahead of the scorer in alignment, when the passer passed. SAOT is the legitimate offspring of an equally polarising technology, Video Assistant Referee (VAR). Not sure if Qatar or Ecuador minded - they got on with it, but Fox sport ignited a fierce controversy out of a tinderbox that was Alan Shearer speaking to BBC - which didn't show the opening ceremony, devoting that precious time to discussing Qatar's rights record on migrants (read Express' excellent series). Anyway, this was the Torres-Valencia tandem that was disallowed after Ecuador had gone through with their celebratory circle kneeling on the sidelines and pointing to the sky. "I’m going to have a blooming high blood pressure by the end of the month if this carries on this way,” Alan Shearer told BBC. “I don’t think there’s any person watching this in the world who thinks that this is offside. Ball goes up, the challenge is there, we’re all thinking, ‘OK, it’s not a high kick there, he wins the header, there’" The former Toon teamer descibed the decision as ‘madness’ while Gary Lineker labelled it ‘absurd’, asking: “Really? Is that what VAR is for?" There were two other goals to talk of, so this much on the no-goal should suffice.
