Trossard, De Bruyne score and Belgium defeats New Zealand 5-1 to advance at the World Cup

VANCOUVER: With a flurry of of goals, Belgium finally found its footing at the World Cup.
Leandro Trossard scored a pair of goals and Belgium overcame a slow start in the tournament to advance to the knockout round atop Group G with a 5-1 victory over New Zealand on Friday night.
Belgium will face an as-yet undetermined third-place finisher on Wednesday in Seattle. The match was played simultaneously to the other group finale in Seattle between Egypt and Iran, which ended in a 1-1 draw, dropping Egypt out of first.
The Belgians went into the match a surprising third in its group after opening the World Cup with a 1-1 draw against Egypt and a scoreless draw against Iran.
“I think we had the chances as well in the first two games, and we didn’t take them.

So it’s important that we took them today,” Trossard said. “And it’s always nice to score a lot of goals, and we’re just really happy to go through in first place as well, and yeah, a lot of joy.”
Kevin De Bruyne, Romelu Lukaku and Alexis Saelemaekers also scored for the Belgians, who were eliminated in the group stage in Qatar four years ago after finishing third at the 2018 World Cup in Russia.
Elijah Just scored for New Zealand, which needed to win outright to have a chance at advancing.

The All Whites head home without a first-ever World Cup win.
Should Belgium win its knockout round opener, it will face the winner of the match against the United States and Bosnia-Herzegovina in the round of 16.
“First, we’ll have to win our round of 32 match. I don’t even know who we’ll be playing yet, so it would be disrespectful to start talking about the round of 16 already,” Belgium coach Rudi Garcia said.