Belgium bid to crack Spain’s ironclad defence in World Cup quarter final

Belgium meet Spain in the World Cup quarter-finals on Friday with the daunting task of breaching the European champions’ watertight defence for the first time at the 2026 tournament.

In beating Cristiano Ronaldo’s Portugal 1-0 on Monday, Luis de la Fuente’s men became the first team in history to record six consecutive World Cup clean sheets.

Spain have not shown the attacking flair of France but they are playing the careful, possession-based football that took them to glory in South Africa in 2010.

The prodigiously gifted Lamine Yamal is the team’s most potent attacker on paper but the teenager arrived in the United States still recovering from a late-season injury and has netted just once in five games.