Belgium Cannot Be Understood By The Pedestrian Soccer Mind

It has long been a staple of sporting analysis that the last thing you saw is a terrible predictor of the thing you will see.

Las Vegas is paved with the headstones of people who thought they figured out a team's future by breaking down its past.

And then there's the Belgian men's national soccer team, which takes this adage one fallacy further by being different teams within the same game, and doing it repeatedly so that the cagey analyst just walks away at the start of the national anthem and says, "Tell me when it ends." They got to this point with a tedious draw against Egypt and then doubling down on the tedium with a scoreless draw with Iran; only a mismatched victory over New Zealand allowed them to win their group and advance to last night. 

Thus, it is with exhausted joy mixed with bewilderment that the USMNT prepares for next Monday's round of 16 showdown with the Belgians, whose performance in their 3-2 extra-time victory over Senegal was very late-model Belgian indeed.

They were listless, bland, and seemingly too old to be bold for 85 minutes, during which time they fell behind the far more intrepid and inventive Senegalese, 2-0, and even subbed out their best-ever player (Kevin De Bruyne), and most capable attacker (Jeremy Doku) in what looked like acknowledgement of the inevitable.

They were so fried with the game and each other that a https://x.com/brfootball/status/2072444808451232027" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">second-half hydration break scuffle-ette broke out between Youri Tielemans and Leandro Trossard.