Ma Ning to make World Cup refereeing debut as Ecuador face elimination against Curacao

China’s Ma Ning will referee Ecuador vs Curacao in Group E of the 2026 World Cup at Kansas City, with Ecuador knowing defeat would effectively eliminate them from the tournament before their final group game.

The 47-year-old Ma is no stranger to major occasions, having served as a fourth official at the 2022 World Cup across six matches without taking the whistle. He steps up to the main role here for the first time at a World Cup, having previously refereed the Club World Cup and the Arab Cup.

The peak of Ma’s career so far came at the 2023 Asian Cup final — played in early 2024 — where he awarded three penalties to hosts Qatar, all converted by Akram Afif as Qatar beat Jordan 3-1. That tournament’s final is broadly equivalent in prestige to a European Championship final.

Assisting Ma on the lines are fellow Chinese official Zhou Fei and Qatar’s Saud Al-Maqaleh. New Zealander Campbell-Kirk Kawana-Waugh serves as fourth official. The VAR operation is led by China’s Fu Ming, with Italy’s Marco Di Bello and Poland’s Tomasz Kwiatkowski alongside him in the booth.

The stakes are high for both sides in Kansas City. Ecuador lost 1-0 to Ivory Coast in their Group E opener and, because head-to-head record takes precedence over goal difference in the tiebreaker rules, a second defeat would leave them mathematically unable to qualify with a game still to play.

Curacao’s situation is less immediately terminal, but the competition debutants were hammered 7-1 by Germany in their opening fixture and realistically need a result here to keep any hope of progression alive.