Maxi Araújo the hero in Saudi Arabia, stunner at Club World Cup (video) | OneFootball

Maxi Araújo, a Sporting player, played the hero for Uruguay by scoring the equaliser against Saudi Arabia in the South American national team’s World Cup 2026 opener. Despite going into half-time behind, the team completely dominated the second half of the match, played at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami.

After the match, Maxi admitted the poor start in his comments. “The first half was difficult, we couldn’t find the ball, but then we settled down and had a good second half,” said the green-and-whites’ number 20, who scored in the 80th minute, to DSports.

“Even though we drew, I think that based on the second half we deserved a little more, and the equaliser came a bit late,” he said. “In the second half, they didn’t have a single shot on target against us, and I think we did a great job. We did what we’re used to doing, which is getting into the box,” he added, making it clear that the result could have been different.

As such, Uruguay will now have to focus on the challenges ahead in Group H. The South American side return to action this Sunday against Cape Verde, a team that produced one of the competition’s biggest surprises by drawing with Spain.

Maxi — currently in the spotlight in the transfer market — highlighted the need to correct what went wrong. “We knew all three opponents were going to be tough. Now we have to rest and fix what we didn’t do well. I think we did a lot of very good things and we need to improve, because the next opponent will be very tough,” he concluded, referring to the matches still to come.

Check out the goal:

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇵🇹 here.