THIS WAS AN ECUADOR of explosive moments. Having taken the lead in the eighth minute, they played for much of the first half in languid rhythm. But whenever Luis Valencia, their powerful outside right, was on the ball, danger threatened. Agustin Delgado, a veteran of so many Ecuador games and named man of the match, was a threateningly effective figure up front, too. Yet it was Valencia, eventually injured and forced to leave the field on 72 minutes, who for much of the match carried menace for Ecuador.

Edison Mendez, with his neat control and quick thinking, worked skilfully and productively on the left, moving into the middle when he felt the urge. But for long periods it seemed that, for all their superiority, Ecuador might be content with that opening goal until Delgado and Iván Kaviedes scored in the second half.

Having brushed aside Poland, they come up next against Germany, the hosts, in a match that will decide which of the teams tops the group. Luis Suarez, Ecuador’s shrewd Colombian manager, seems philosophical about it. The longer a team progresses in the tournament, he remarked, the harder it would get.

“We have beaten historic teams like Argentina and Brazil,” the coach said, although he did emphasise that this had occurred not in Rio de Janeiro or Buenos Aires but on the heights of Quito. He smiled when he was asked about the fact that Ecuador were now winning their matches at sea level. “We showed in these two games that altitude isn’t everything,” he said.

Costa Rica, who scored a couple of goals against Germany, although they lost 4-2, began in Hamburg with some promise and a certain composure. They controlled the ball well, seemed sturdy in defence, only to be outdone by that early Ecuador goal, which was well engineered and taken. When Delgado sent the ball out to Valencia on the right flank, he was quite unattended. He cut in to strike a fast cross to which Carlos Tenó rio, later obliged to go off injured, got his head.

Costa Rica kept pegging away and brought on an extra striker on 29 minutes in Alvaro Saborio, which suggested they felt confident of keeping Ecuador at bay. There was only one more sigificant threat to their goal in the half when Valencia thundered outside his man and sent in a shot that seemed almost to take José Porras by surprise before he turned it away. The next minute, Costa Rica had one of their few real chances, at the far right-hand post when Douglas Sequeira sent his header weakly wide.

In the second half, however, almost all the running was made by Ecuador. On 52 minutes, Valencia had another run and cross that enabled Delgado to strike a fierce shot, well dealt with by Porras. But two minutes later, Mendez cleverly got the ball to Delgado in a right-flank position and Delgado’s ferocious shot found the top near corner.

There was an unexpected moment when Mauricio Solís suddenly embarked on a glittering solo run, leaving the Ecuador defence behind, only for Cristian Mora to block his eventual shot at the near post. Ecuador were thwarted again in the 79th minute when Kaviedes, a substitute, began and ended a fine fast move with a shot that Porras cleared yet again.

However, Kurt Bernard, a Costa Rica substitute, proved a lively figure, enabling Saborio to clip a post and in the last moment, he himself had a left-foot shot blocked low by Mora. In between those moments, however, Delgado and Mendez enabled Kaviedes to thump a first-time left-foot shot past Porras for Ecuador’s third.