Spain are into the World Cup semi-finals, and France would be better served studying the tape than the scoreline. Two goals to one flatters Belgium, and flatters them heavily. Opta had Luis de la Fuente's side ahead 17 shots to five and 2.08 expected goals to 0.37, the sort of gap that usually ends four or five apart. That it stayed close owed a little to Thibaut Courtois and a great deal to Belgium spending the afternoon defending a match they were never truly in. Here is how Spain controlled it.
One call, one pivot
De la Fuente made a single change worth discussing, and it doubled as a message. Fabian Ruiz started ahead of Pedri alongside Rodri in a 4-3-3, with Rodri left to anchor everything as a lone pivot. "We know what these players will give us when we put them in," the manager said afterwards. "We have chosen the best players and people in the world and they get along great together."
Belgium's midfield, by contrast, was patched together before a ball had been kicked. Youri Tielemans was pulled from the starting eleven after a warm-up injury, per ESPN, and Nicolas Raskin came into a screen that had just lost its senior organiser. Rodri went hunting the space that absence created. He found rather a lot of it, and it did not take long to cost Belgium.
The right side did the damage
The opener, on the half hour, was a right-sided mugging. Lamine Yamal released Pedro Porro, whose cross picked out Dani Olmo; Courtois beat the shot away, and Fabian Ruiz was first to the rebound. It was no smash-and-grab. By half-time, with the score somehow level at 1-1, Sofascore had Spain on nine shots to two, 62% of the ball, and 1.08 xG to Belgium's 0.18. The control was real. The scoreboard was lying.
Rodri was the reason it held together. He finished the tournament with 62 line-breaking passes in the final third, per Opta, equalling the single-edition record Toni Kroos set in 2014. Belgium could not press him without leaving gaps behind them, and could not sit off without letting him thread them apart. They tried a little of both, and were punished either way.
The pattern barely shifted after the interval. Spain kept the ball, kept working the right, kept manufacturing the better chances; the full-time count of 17 shots to five, per Opta, reads like a training drill interrupted twice, once by a Belgian header and once by a goalkeeping injury.
Against the run of play, then no Courtois
Belgium's equaliser told its own story. Charles De Ketelaere headed in a Timothy Castagne cross in the 41st minute, four minutes before the break, and Opta's own account described it as coming "against the run of play". It ended Unai Simon's shutout streak, which Opta put at 649 minutes, though other outlets rounded the figure to roughly 650 and declined to pin down a minute. A set-piece delivery and a header. That, in essence, was Belgium's route to goal, because sustained control was never on the menu.
The match tilted for good on 71 minutes. Courtois could not continue and gave way to Senne Lammens. The injury was to his thigh. "I took a goal kick and I felt a lot of pain in my quadriceps," the goalkeeper said. "I didn't want players on the pitch who were not 100 percent, and that was Courtois today," Rudi Garcia added. "He was excellent throughout the World Cup, but we didn't want his injury to get worse." Losing a goalkeeper of that stature, with Spain still turning the screw, unsettled a defence that had leaned on him for most of the afternoon. Lammens, thrown on cold, would be beaten inside 20 minutes.
The bench that settled it
De la Fuente had already refreshed his front line, Pedri on for Fabian Ruiz at 55 minutes and Nico Williams for Mikel Oyarzabal at 79. The decisive blow, though, came from the deepest cut of all. Mikel Merino entered in the 86th minute and scored in the 88th, barely two minutes after coming on, pouncing when Lammens spilled a Pau Cubarsi drive from distance. It was Merino's second substitute winner of the knockout stage, following the goal that saw off Portugal in the last 16.
That is the tactical takeaway worth keeping. Spain did not merely field the better eleven; they carried a bench that changed matches, and a manager who trusted it when it mattered. Belgium had one plan and a goalkeeper to stretch it as far as it would go. When the goalkeeper went off, the plan went with him.
France are next, in the last four. On this evidence, they will need to work out how to prise the ball off Rodri, because nobody at this World Cup has managed it yet.
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