Canada and Fabrizio Romano big winners, but Qatar, Ismael Kone left with painful World Cup memories | OneFootball

It was a fantastic, historic day for the Canadian national team and Jonathan David – which, by association, also means Fabrizio Romano – at the 2026 World Cup, but one Qatar will want to quickly forget and Ismael Kone will never forget.

Canada truly put Qatar to the sword to earn their first-ever World Cup victory and all but secure a place in the knockout rounds for the very first time.

They were on it from the off, taking the lead through Cyle Larin after 16 minutes before David’s first goal of the tournament gave a poor Qatari side a mountain to climb.

Four minutes after going 2-0 down, Julen Lopetegui’s men had Homam Ahmed sent off for a last-man push on Tajon Buchanan, initially given as a yellow card and penalty – a decision both sides probably would have preferred over a red card and free-kick.

It killed any chance of a Qatar comeback, but instead of the game dropping in pace and Canada merely passing their opponents to death in Vancouver, the co-hosts added a third through David in the third minute of first-half injury time.

David’s first-half brace would have silenced his critics after a disappointing performance against Bosnia and Herzegovina on matchday one, but more importantly, it brought a smile to the face of transfer guru Romano.

Romano worked endlessly to get David out of Lille for years before his free transfer to Italian giants Juventus last summer, posting umpteen updates a week about the Canadian striker on social media, seemingly as his not-so-secret agent.

Romano’s persistence has made David – who most people won’t have seen play before and may have even questioned the existence of – something of a meme, and football fans on social media certainly enjoyed his poor performance last Friday.

Hat-trick hero David and Romano were laughing tonight after a 6-0 World Cup win for Canada against nine-man Qatar.

It was one-sided all game as Canada recorded the largest victory by a CONCACAF team in World Cup history on the day they earned their first-ever win at the tournament, in their third finals appearance.

For all of Jesse Marsch’s team’s relentlessness, Qatar were beyond hopeless. That was comfortably the worst performance of the tournament. Not only were they poor, but they were also unnecessarily dirty.

The first red card was clumsy; the second, for Assim Madibo, was not replayable on TV.

Qatar as a collective should be able to erase this result from their memory, but not Madibo – who looked genuinely devastated – and certainly not Kone, whose ankle was hanging off and will be out for a while.

It was a horror injury and a miracle that Kone was in relatively decent spirits as he was stretchered off, especially as David was in tears.

Kone’s replacement, Nathan Saliba, actually scored a direct free-kick and dedicated Canada’s fourth to his teammate, before a comical Mohammed Manai own goal summed up Qatar’s miserable performance, and David added his third late on.

But David could barely enjoy the feeling of a World Cup hat-trick because of the injury to Kone.

It has truly spoiled an otherwise perfect day for Canada, David…and Romano.