This is turning out to be the World Cup worth the four-year wait. This World Cup has given us matches whose stories will be told years from now. Well, at least till the next World Cup for sure.
When Belgium arrived in Russia, they had a squad that would scare any team. However, there were question marks about their mental strength to make it past tough tests as has been proved in the past World Cups and Euro 2016. The Belgians however, went a long way to answer the doubters. Belgium made 10 changes from the team that played against England in the last match of the group stages and thus were back to full strength. Captain Vincent Kompany’s presence on the field acted as a major boost to Belgium.
In the first half of the match, both Japan and Belgium lacked a decent final ball and the first half ended scorelessly. However, Belgium almost conceded when Yuto Nagatomo suddenly surged forward and a surprised Courtois almost fumbled his weak shot into his own net, but he held on to the ball just before it looked to trickle over the line. Then the match jolted forward in the three minutes after halftime. Jan Vertonghen struck out his leg to Kagawa’s pass, which enabled Haraguchi to shoot across Courtois, and the ball ended in the back of the net.
Quickly Belgium counter-attacked and Eden Hazard came close to scoring as his powerful shot thumped against the woodwork. Japan attacked again and this time Takashi Inui doubled the lead when he lashed an effort from 20 yards out and it ended into the back of the net.
Belgium started panicking but kept up their attacking tempo. Vertonghen seemed to make up for his error with a looping header that floated over Japanese goalkeeper Eiji Kawashima to score Belgium’s first. Fellaini, a skyscraper of a midfielder, then powered an unstoppable header off a cross from Hazard to level the score. However, Japan kept attacking and forced two saves from Courtois. The second save led to the winning goal from Belgium, when Courtois picked out the ball from a corner and laid it off to midfielder Kevin De Bruyne, who surged up the field and fed the ball to Meunier. Meunier passed to Lukaku who made the ball roll through his legs into the path of oncoming Chadli who slotted the ball into the net in the last few seconds of injury time and Japanese players slumped to the ground. The tag of ‘Golden generation’ that has been put on the Belgian team finally seems to not weigh them down any longer.
