Brazil crashes out
KAZAN, Russia – Belgium reached the World Cup semifinals for the first time in 32 years by holding off five-time champion Brazil 2-1 Friday, sending Neymar home without living up to the expectations of being soccer’s most expensive player.
Belgium scored the decisive goal on a counterattack just after a corner had been taken by Neymar. Romelu Lukaku surged forward with the ball and Kevin De Bruyne put it in the net to give Belgium a 2-0 lead in the 31st minute.
“This was the biggest test for us,” De Bruyne said. “Brazil was so strong in attack.”
The opener came after a bit of good fortune. Fernandinho’s trailing arm inadvertently helped Belgium captain Vincent Kompany’s header land in his own net in the 13th minute.
As Belgium lost cohesiveness in the second half and Brazil’s changes stirred the team, substitute Renato Augusto reduced the deficit in the 76th with a header.
But it was too late for Brazil to muster an equalizer as efforts to force the game into extra time were thwarted by Belgium goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois.
For the third time in a World Cup – after 1982 and 2006 – the semifinals will feature only European teams. Belgium and France will meet in St. Petersburg on Tuesday. The next day in Moscow, it will be either England or Sweden against either Russia or Croatia. The other two quarterfinal matches will be played today.
Humiliated 7-1 by Germany in the semifinals four year ago on home soil, Brazil didn’t even get that far this time. Just like defending champion Germany and Argentina before them, the Kazan Arena is where Brazil’s World Cup challenge ended.
“This is beating Brazil in the World Cup, in the knockout,” Belgium coach Roberto Martinez said. “Just treasure it and pass it down in the generations.”
Belgium is now on a 24-match unbeaten streak.
There is guaranteed to be a fourth straight European team winning the World Cup on July 15 in Moscow. Belgium, which finished fourth at the 1986 tournament and has never won the European Championship, will hope its golden generation can deliver its first trophy.
In a Volkswagen commercial running during TV coverage of the World Cup, soccer fans from countries around the globe are seen inviting U.S. fans to start rooting for their teams.
It’s a tough reminder of the blow dealt to Fox and Telemundo when the U.S. team failed to qualify for the tournament, a major factor in the drop-off of the 2018 FIFA World Cup TV audience when compared with 2014.
Through the Round of 16, Fox has averaged 3.64 million viewers, down 36 percent from what ESPN and ABC averaged in 2014, according to Nielsen. Excluding the U.S. matches in 2014, the drop is 19 percent. Telemundo’s average audience through July 1 is 2.1 million viewers, which includes streaming. Univision averaged 3.5 million viewers over the entire tournament in 2014.
But while the comparisons to Brazil four years ago aren’t pretty, the networks carrying this year’s tournament say they are doing better than expected, considering the circumstances. Not only is there no U.S. team, but the Russian venue meant many earlyround games started in the morning in the U.S. In 2014, they aired in the afternoon and prime time.
Despite the obstacles, Telemundo Deportes President Ray Warren said the Comcast-owned Spanish-language network is delivering the audience levels promised to advertisers who bought commercial time in the tournament. Four matches with Mexico’s team, a major attraction for Telemundo’s viewers, have been a significant help.
“We planned and budgeted to have Mexico in four games,” Warren said. “It was a gift from the Lord.”
Mexico has accounted for the top two most-watched matches of the tournament on Telemundo.
The June 23 match with South Korea averaged 7.1 million viewers. The Mexico-germany match on June 17 pulled 7.42 million viewers. The totals include online streaming of the telecasts, which have added as much as 800,000 to the Telemundo audience totals.