Eloy Room's record 15 saves earn Curaçao a historic point against Ecuador

Curaçao goalkeeper Eloy Room made a record 15 saves as the World Cup's smallest nation held Ecuador to a 0-0 draw in Kansas City. Ecuador had 26 shots but have now gone two games without a goal.

The smallest nation at the World Cup produced the biggest story of the night. Curaçao held Ecuador to a goalless draw at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, and they did it almost entirely through one man. Eloy Room made fifteen saves, the most ever recorded in a 90-minute World Cup match, in a goalkeeping display for the ages.

Ecuador laid siege from the first whistle. They finished with twenty-six shots, fifteen of them on target, seventy-five per cent of the ball and nine corners, and still could not find a way through. Moisés Caicedo ran the midfield and Ecuador poured forward in waves, but every time the ball arrived on a Curaçao toe, Room was there to deny them.

This was not luck. Room beat away low drives, clawed efforts from his top corner and smothered everything at his feet, breaking the World Cup single-match saves record that had stood since Tim Howard's famous night in 2014. Each stop lifted his team-mates, and Curaçao began to believe the unthinkable was on.

In front of him, the rest of the Caribbean side defended for their lives. Leandro Bacuna organised a back line that threw bodies in front of everything, and a points tally of five yellow cards told the story of a night spent on the rack. They blocked, they cleared, they ran the clock, and they held.

For Ecuador, it was an evening of pure frustration. Sebastián Beccacece's side have now gone two games without a goal, a narrow loss to Ivory Coast followed by ninety minutes of huffing against a packed defence. Enner Valencia and the forwards will be haunted by the chances that got away.

The point means everything to Curaçao. After losing 7-1 to Germany in their opener, when Livano Comenencia scored their first-ever World Cup goal, this was a different kind of history: the first World Cup point in the nation's history, earned against a side ranked far above them.

Group E now has a familiar shape at the top, with Germany clear and Ivory Coast second, but the race for the qualifying places has tightened. Ecuador and Curaçao both sit on a single point, and Ecuador, for all their dominance, badly need to start scoring.

For Kenyan fans, and for neutrals everywhere, this was the kind of night that makes the World Cup what it is. A tiny island nation, a goalkeeper writing his name into the record books, and a wall of blue shirts refusing to break. Mende ndio walishinda mioyo usiku huu: the underdogs won the hearts tonight. Eloy Room will never buy a drink in Willemstad again.