28JUN

Belgium hit five to top the group

2 min read

12:23UTC

Belgium beat New Zealand 5-1 to top their group ahead of Egypt, scoring five in a match for the first time at this World Cup.

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Key takeaway

Belgium thrashed New Zealand 5-1 to win their group ahead of Egypt.

Belgium beat New Zealand 5-1 on 26 June to win their group ahead of Egypt, ending New Zealand's tournament⁠¹. The five goals were Belgium's most in a match at this World Cup and added to the group stage's record tally.

Belgium enter the knockouts in form but with a bracket they have not mastered: semi-finalists in 2018, they fell at the group stage in 2022. New Zealand, back at a World Cup for the first time since 2010, go out in the group phase.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Belgium beat New Zealand 5-1 on 26 June. This was Belgium's biggest win of the 2026 tournament. New Zealand qualified for the 2026 World Cup for the first time since 2010 but did not win a match across the group stage. New Zealand, known as the All Whites, typically qualify for the World Cup only via a play-off against a team from another confederation; they are not considered one of the top footballing nations globally. Belgium finished first in their group, ahead of Egypt. They are a well-established footballing nation who reached the semi-finals at the 2018 World Cup in Russia. At the 2022 World Cup in Qatar they went out in the group stage. Their 2026 squad includes younger players who were not part of the team that peaked in 2018.

What could happen next?

Risk
Belgium's 5-1 win over New Zealand came against one of the tournament's weakest opponents; the knockout draw will provide the first meaningful gauge of whether their squad renewal is competitive at the top level.

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources

Primary parallel: Belgium's 2018 World Cup run to third place is the relevant baseline. They beat Brazil, Japan, England and Tunisia in that run, peaking as a genuine contender. The squad included De Bruyne, Hazard, Lukaku, Courtois, Vertonghen and Alderweireld at or near their peak ages. The 2018 run set expectations that the 2022 group-stage exit (losing to Morocco, drawing with Croatia) sharply deflated.

Counter-parallel: Belgium's 2022 group-stage exit was their worst World Cup performance since 2002. Thierry Henry, then an assistant coach to Roberto Martinez, described the squad as one that had run its cycle. The point is that Belgium at 2022 were the same generation that peaked in 2018, not a younger squad struggling to emerge. The 2026 squad is a genuinely different generation, which means the 2018 comparisons are illustrative rather than predictive.

Consensus view: The Athletic's Belgium correspondent noted before the New Zealand match that Belgium's 2026 squad is structurally younger than the 2018 and 2022 vintages, with Leandro Trossard and Lois Openda operating where Eden Hazard and Romelu Lukaku once did. The 5-1 scoreline, Belgium's highest of the tournament, is cited as the first evidence of attacking fluency from the new-generation squad rather than a result driven by ageing stars.

Counter-view: Belgium's opponents in the group stage include New Zealand (ranked outside the top 80 at tournament start) and teams of comparable standing. Critics of the 'squad renewal' narrative point out that Belgium have not yet beaten a team ranked inside the top 30, and that the 5-1 against New Zealand tells you more about New Zealand's ceiling than Belgium's. The test of renewal comes in the knockout rounds.

Key tension: Whether Belgium's 5-1 result reflects genuine attacking depth in a post-golden-generation squad, or a comfortable win against an opponent whose presence in the 48-team field illustrates the trade-off between format expansion and competitive balance.

Sources:Yahoo Sports

Mentions:Belgium →New Zealand →Egypt →Croatia →Russia →England →Tunisia →Japan →World Cup →Morocco →Qatar →The Athletic →Brazil →Romelu Lukaku →

First Reported In

Update #31 · Iran out without losing as last 32 is set

Yahoo Sports· 28 Jun 2026

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Different Perspectives

Council on Foreign Relations

CFR's analysis identified 18.75% of the 48-team field facing access barriers — the only available quantification after the State Department admitted it has none. The explicit contrast with South Africa 2010's visa waiver for all ticket holders positions the US as a regressive host by historical standards.

New York commuters / Assemblyman Bhalla

Bhalla framed Penn Station's closures as a class issue: 'For the 99 percent that can't afford to attend the games, it would be nice to at least know how you're going to get home from work.' Eight closures lock 650,000 daily commuters out for tournament traffic, with one on a Monday rush hour.

French Football Federation

The FFF called an 11:00 CEST press conference for 28 July, at its Paris headquarters, following an extraordinary executive committee meeting, at which Zinedine Zidane is expected to be presented as head coach succeeding Didier Deschamps. As of this writing no communique confirms the appointment, contract length or start date.

Morocco

Morocco is pushing for the 2030 final at its Grand Stade Hassan II in Casablanca, a planned 115,000-seat venue that would be the world's largest football stadium on completion. The venue is contested by a Spanish petition for the Santiago Bernabeu, and FIFA has fixed neither the venue nor the tournament's proposed 64-team format.

FIFA

FIFA's first tournament report, published 27 July, itemises nearly 300,000 accredited personnel, 73,700 security staff and 300,000 square metres of custom-grown turf, with no revenue or cost figure attached. As a Swiss association answering to its own Congress rather than a treasury, FIFA has followed the same operational-before-financial sequence it used after Qatar 2022.

Javier Tebas / La Liga

La Liga president Javier Tebas said on 21 July that FIFA's system is rotten from the root and that Gianni Infantino's time as president has, in his words, concluded. Tebas has no vote in FIFA's process, so days after the IOC declined jurisdiction over a separate ethics complaint, he used the only instrument he has.