Some nights the game tilts early and never rights itself. Senegal needed just four minutes to set the tone at BMO Field, and by the final whistle Iraq had been buried beneath a five-goal avalanche that flattered neither their resistance nor their numbers. This was authority made flesh, a World Cup Group I statement delivered with the kind of ruthlessness that turns a fixture into a message.

Habib Diarra lit the fuse before the crowd had settled, stabbing home from close range after Abdoulaye Seck flicked on a corner. From there the contest bent to Senegal's will. When Rebin Sulaka was shown a red card on the quarter-hour, the last flickers of Iraqi hope were snuffed out, and what followed was less a match than a controlled demolition.

Iraq, reduced and exposed, spent the evening chasing shadows. Senegal, patient and pitiless, waited for the second half to open the floodgates properly. By the time Iliman Ndiaye curled in the fifth, the scoreline read like a summary of everything that separated the two sides on the night.

An early blow

The opening goal arrived with the ink barely dry on the team sheets. Senegal won a corner, worked it to Seck, and his knockdown fell to Diarra, who needed only a flash of his right boot to lash the ball into the top right corner. Four minutes gone, and already the shape of the evening was drawn.

The blow visibly rattled Iraq, and their discomfort curdled into disaster on thirteen minutes. Sulaka's dismissal left them a man down for more than three-quarters of the contest, a mountain few teams could climb against opposition of Senegal's calibre. The red card did not merely reduce their number; it drained their belief.

For all that, Iraq clung on until the interval, and there was a stubbornness in their rearguard that briefly suggested they might keep the damage contained. It was a false comfort. Senegal were merely gathering themselves, probing for the seams, content to let a stretched defence tire itself into submission before delivering the knockout blows.

The second-half flood

The dam broke on fifty-six minutes. Lamine Camara threaded the ball through and Ismaïla Sarr swept it home from close range into the top left corner, doubling the lead and unshackling Senegal entirely. Three minutes later it was three, Sarr turning provider as Pape Gueye stepped up to arrow a left-footed strike from outside the box into the same top-left corner.

Gueye, suddenly the fulcrum of everything, was not finished. On seventy-one minutes he collected Ndiaye's clever headed pass and drilled a second into the bottom left corner from the middle of the box, completing a personal double that underlined how comprehensively Senegal had seized the midfield. The goals came in a rush, each one a fresh wound on an Iraqi side long past resistance.

The rout was sealed on eighty-two minutes when Ndiaye, having turned creator, took his own reward. He gathered possession outside the box, set himself, and bent a right-footed shot into the top right corner, Gueye returning the favour with the assist. Five goals, three assists between Gueye, Sarr and Ndiaye, and a scoreline that spoke of total control.

What it means

For Senegal, this was the ideal night — goals shared, momentum banked, and a goal difference boosted that could prove decisive in the fine margins of Group I. A five-goal haul at a World Cup is rare currency, and Senegal spent it while keeping a clean sheet, the mark of a side operating in balance at both ends of the pitch.

The identity of the scorers will please the coaching staff as much as the volume. Diarra's early strike, Sarr's poacher's finish, Gueye's brace from range and inside the box, and Ndiaye's flourish showed a team capable of hurting opponents from every angle. When a side scores from a set piece, from build-up play and from distance in a single evening, it announces itself as a genuine threat.

Iraq, by contrast, must regroup swiftly. The red card shaped the contest, but the manner of the collapse — four goals conceded after the break — will trouble them far more than the arithmetic of playing a man short. In a group of this size, a defeat of this scale leaves little room for error and demands an immediate response.

The road ahead

Senegal leave BMO Field with their tournament pulse racing and their confidence soaring. Performances like this ripple through a squad, sharpening belief and easing the pressure that so often smothers teams in the group stage. The challenge now is to carry the same clarity into their remaining fixtures, where opponents will not be so obligingly reduced to ten.

There is a warning buried within the triumph, too. Iraq's early dismissal made Senegal's task simpler than it might otherwise have been, and the truest test of this side will come against a full complement of eleven, organised and unbowed. For now, though, such caveats can wait; the result stands, emphatic and unarguable.

Iraq's campaign hangs on how they answer this reverse. Pride, at least, must be salvaged, and the belief restored that one wretched half does not define them. In a World Cup, momentum is everything — and on this evening, all of it belonged to Senegal.