Santa Clara
\nAustria celebrated their long-awaited return to the World Cup with a 3-1 win over determined debutants Jordan on Tuesday, with substitute Marko Arnautovic the difference in a gritty, end-to-end Group J match.
\nOn a brisk night in the San Francisco Bay Area, Austria went ahead with a 21st-minute thunderbolt from Romano Schmid before Jordan fought back after the break through Ali Olwan\u2019s exquisite strike in off the post.
\nThe introduction of Arnautovic at halftime was decisive for Austria.
\nThe 37-year-old striker had a goal disallowed in the 69th minute, then pressured defender Yazan Al Arab into an own goal seven minutes later before converting a penalty deep into stoppage time.
\nAustria midfielder Konrad Laimer said they knew coming into the match how tough their opponents would be.
\n\u201cWe knew that this was going to be a difficult match \u2026 there were situations where we did a good job, there were phases where we underperformed,\u201d he added.
\n\u201cWhat\u2019s important is the mentality of the entire team \u2014 we never gave up, we kept going until the end and finally we came out on top.\u201d<\/p>\n
28-year World Cup absence
\nJordan defended resolutely and were fierce on the break, with the pace of forwards Olwan and Mousa Al-Tamari a constant threat to Austria, who were playing at their first World Cup in 28 years.
\nThe match got off to a frenetic start, with Jordan causing a scare two minutes in with a counter-attack that led to captain Ehsan Haddad blasting low into the side netting.
\nAustria soon got into their stride, with Marcel Sabitzer the central figure in a succession of attacks, and they broke the deadlock on 21 minutes when Schmid found the top corner from outside the box.
\nJordan pressed hard and found the leveller five minutes after halftime when Olwan powered down the left before firing a sumptuous shot in off the far post.
\nAustria thought they were back in front when Arnautovic prodded home a loose ball from close range, but the goal was ruled out due to a handball by Stefan Posch following a VAR review.
\nThey got the decisive goal when Sabitzer\u2019s corner went in off Al Arab, then put the game beyond Jordan through Arnautovic\u2019s penalty 12 minutes into stoppage time.
\n\u201cWe didn\u2019t deserve to lose in our first-ever World Cup appearance \u2014 a historic participation for us,\u201d Jordan\u2019s Olwan said.
\n\u201cWe still have two matches ahead, and based on what I saw from our team today, we are capable of qualifying.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Santa Clara Austria celebrated their long-awaited return to the World Cup with a 3-1 win over determined debutants Jordan on Tuesday, with substitute Marko Arnautovic the difference in a gritty, end-to-end Group J match. On a brisk night in the San Francisco Bay Area, Austria went ahead with a 21st-minute thunderbolt from Romano Schmid before …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":99200,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99182"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99182\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":99207,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99182\/revisions\/99207"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}