Spain aim for World Cup date with France by beating Belgium

LOS ANGELES: European champions Spain are on a World Cup collision course with Kylian Mbappe’s France if they can beat Belgium in a quarter-final on Friday.
At the spectacular SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, the Belgians face the daunting task of breaking through a Spanish defense that has yet to concede a goal in the tournament.
If Spain win, they will head to Texas next Tuesday for a mouth-watering semifinal against France that many observers are already describing as the final before the final.
First though Spain need to find goals against a Belgium team who started the World Cup slowly but caught fire as the tournament has gone on.
The 4-1 demolition of the USA in the last round showed just how far the team coached by Rudi Garcia have come in just a few weeks.
Spain meanwhile have not displayed the attacking flair of France but they are playing the possession-based football that carried them to the country’s only World Cup triumph, in South Africa in 2010.
Lamine Yamal of Barcelona, who turns 19 next week, is Spain’s standout attacker but he arrived in the United States after suffering a late-season injury and has seemed a peripheral figure at times, scoring just once in five games.
Yamal, widely tipped to inherit the mantle of the world’s greatest player from Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, could be due a goal.
“We know that the best version of him, the attacking Lamine, is something that we haven’t quite seen yet in this World Cup. Not to the level that we’re used to,” said Spain coach Luis de la Fuente.
In Yamal’s absence, Mikel Oyarzabal has scored four times, including twice in the 3-0 defeat of Austria in the last 32 at SoFi.
Spain have conceded just six shots on target in their five matches so far.

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