matĉo

A matĉo is a sporting fixture between two teams or two players: futbala matĉo, matĉo inter du landoj, gajni la matĉon.

Two English matches, two Esperanto words. This is the useful thing to take from the page. English "match" is three unrelated words wearing one coat, and Esperanto refuses to copy the pun:

• the sporting fixture is matĉo
• the little stick you strike is alumeto (rank 1618), from French allumette
• "to match", in the sense of going well together, is kongrui or konveni

So mi bezonas alumeton gets you a light and mi bezonas matĉon gets you a fixture, and there is no sentence in which the two could be confused. Homonyms are an accident of one language's history, and a planned language has no reason to inherit somebody else's accidents. Watch for the same split with English "book" (libro against mendi) and "right" (dekstra, ĝusta, rajto).

A register note: matĉo is a modern English borrowing and not everybody likes it. Writers in the simpler-vocabulary tradition prefer konkurso or ludo or a phrase like sporta renkontiĝo. You will meet all of them. Matĉo is what the sports pages actually write.