It’s a familiar story for the United States men’s national team, as it exits the 2026 FIFA World Cup in the round of 16 following a 4-1 loss to Belgium at Seattle Stadium on Monday.<\/p>\n
Belgium opened the scoring in the 9th minute on a strike from Charles De Ketelaere inside the box that he just had to tap in.<\/p>\n
The U.S. responded with a goal from a direct free kick by Malik Tillman in the 31st minute, but Belgium immediately responded with a second goal from De Ketelaere two minutes later.<\/p>\n
Belgium added another in the 57th minute, capitalizing on a mistake by the United States goalkeeper Matt Freese, who lost control of the ball while trying to clear it from outside the box.<\/p>\n
Belgium put the match completely out of reach in the 92nd minute on a goal from Romelu Lukaku, who came on as a substitute in the 67th minute. He has scored 93 international goals for Belgium.<\/p>\n
The result concludes a tournament run that included three victories and a loss for the United States.<\/p>\n
The team opened the group stage with a 4-1 win over Paraguay and a 2-0 win against Australia. After a 3-2 loss to T\u00fcrkiye, the United States advanced to the knockout stage as the winner of Group D. In the Round of 32, the U.S. defeated Bosnia and Herzegovina 2-0 to reach the round of 16 match against Belgium.<\/p>\n
The U.S. has not advanced past the round of 16 since 2002, when it beat Mexico 2-0 to advance to the quarterfinals against Germany. It also matches it finish at the 1994 World Cup, which the U.S. also hosted.<\/p>\n
Belgium advances to the quarterfinals and will play Spain, which beat Portugal 1-0 in Dallas on Monday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It’s a familiar story for the United States men’s national team, as it exits the 2026 FIFA World…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26991,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[7,6283,3937,87,14785],"class_list":["post-26990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-belgium","tag-belgium","tag-event_recap","tag-fifa-mens-world-cup","tag-united-states","tag-wc-united-states-vs-belgium-07-06-2026"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@be\/116876425728075683","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}