Hosts Japan beat crisis-hit South Africa 1-0 in their opening game of the Olympics.
The match was in doubt when 18 South African players had been identified as close contacts after two of their team-mates and a video analyst tested positive for coronavirus on Sunday.
They were the first confirmed cases among Olympic teams at the athletes village but 17 players trained on Wednesday ahead of the game.
Real Madrid’s Take Kubo compounded South Africa’s woes with a second-half winner in the Group A game.
Richarlison’s first-half hat-trick inspired defending champions Brazil to a 4-2 win over Germany in a re-run of the 2016 final.
The Everton striker completed his treble after just 30 minutes but Brazil were given a scare when Nadiem Amiri and Ragnar Ache scored after Maxi Arnold was sent off for Germany.
But Paulinho wrapped up the Group D victory in stoppage time for Andre Jardine’s side.
Mexico stunned France 4-1 to take early control of Group A, with two goals in eight second-half minutes from Alexis Vega and Sebastian Cordova putting them in control.
Andre-Pierre Gignac’s second-half penalty gave France brief hope but Eduardo Aguirre and Uriel Antua netted in the final 10 minutes to seal a comfortable win for Mexico.
Burnley’s Chris Wood scored with 20 minutes remaining as New Zealand beat South Korea 1-0 in Group B – the men’s first-ever Olympics victory – with Honduras beaten 1-0 by Romania in the other game.
Egypt and Spain, who lost Real Madrid’s Dani Ceballos to an ankle injury, drew 0-0 in Group C while 10-man Argentina suffered a 2-0 defeat to Australia.
AC Milan’s Franck Kessie grabbed the winner for Ivory Coast after they came from behind to beat Saudi Arabia 2-1.
Salem Al-Dawsari opened the scoring after 10 minutes but Abdulelah Alamri’s own goal levelled before Kessie struck in the second half to win the Group D opener.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here