The Uruguay national football team closed the curtain on its march
in the South American qualifiers for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar
with a late 2-0 victory over its Chilean host on Tuesday evening (Wednesday morning GMT) in the last eighteenth round of the qualifiers.
Uruguay raised its tally to 28 points in third place, two points ahead of its Ecuadorean counterpart.
The teams of Brazil, Argentina,
Uruguay and Ecuador had booked the direct qualification tickets from the South American continent to the World Cup before the matches of this round,
after they occupied the first four places in the qualifying table, while the Peruvian team settled for the fifth place to qualify for the international play-off
in which the winner of the Asian play-off match between the two teams will meet.
Emirates and Australia.
Chile needed to win this round, and Ecuador stumbled against Argentina and Peru against Paraguay in order to qualify for the play-off
but the results of this round did not favor the team to confirm its absence from the Qatar World Cup.
The first half of the match ended with a goalless draw, which remained until the 79th minute,
when Luis Suarez scored a goal for Uruguay in the 79th minute,
while Federico Valverde scored the second goal for the visitors in the last minute of the match.
Luis Suarez moved ahead of Lionel Messi as the top scorer in South American World Cup qualifiers on Tuesday with his 29th goal,
a bicycle kick that helped Uruguay to a 2-0 win over Chile.
Messi failed to hit the net in Ecuador, where Argentina drew 1-1.
“Special night, special game, special shirt and a goal,
” Suarez wrote on social media alongside a picture of him holding his shirt from the match.
a bicycle kick from four meters out with 11 minutes remaining.
Federico Valverde doubled Uruguay’s lead in the final moments of the match to cement
a remarkable turnaround in fortunes for the side under Diego Alonso.
Alonso took over from Oscar Tabarez in December
last year after four successive defeats put their qualification hopes in jeopardy and he has since guided his new charges to four straight wins.
