A different kind of Monday Night Football comes to Seattle when the United States (US) face Belgium for a place in the World Cup quarter-finals, with an American side \u200bcarrying rising expectations into a meeting with one of Europe’s most experienced teams.<\/p>\n
The \u200cmatch at the Seattle Seahawks’ home stadium, one of the loudest venues in the NFL, is expected to provide a raucous backdrop for a US team whose tournament ambitions have grown with each performance.<\/p>\n
Before the \u200bWorld Cup, many US supporters viewed a place in the last 16 as a \u200breasonable target.<\/p>\n
However, wins over Paraguay and Australia in the group stage, followed \u2060by a 2-0 victory over Bosnia despite playing the final 36 minutes with 10 men, \u200bhave raised hopes that Mauricio Pochettino’s side can make a deeper run on home soil.
\nBelgium, by \u200bcontrast, have yet to fully convince.<\/p>\n
The European side needed a late escape against Senegal, trailing for the majority of the match before scoring twice to level and then advancing after a VAR-assisted penalty decision in \u200bextra time that left Senegal frustrated.<\/p>\n
For Belgium, the tournament may represent the final World Cup \u200bact for the country’s so-called “Golden Generation,” led by Kevin De Bruyne, Romelu Lukaku and Thibaut Courtois.<\/p>\n
The US defence, \u200cregarded \u2060as a potential weakness before the tournament but impressive against Bosnia, will also likely have to contain Jeremy Doku, who is due for a breakout performance after a subdued display so far in the tournament.<\/p>\n
–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":35279,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-38832","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"The European side needed a late escape against Senegal.","published_date":"","news_description":"The European side needed a late escape against Senegal.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/38832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/38832\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38833,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/38832\/revisions\/38833"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=38832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}