Belgium arrived at the last 32 with a statement, beating New Zealand 5-1 to finish top of Group G and send Senegal into a knockout meeting with a team that finally looked sharp. Leandro Trossard scored twice, including Belgium’s first team goal at the tournament, and the result did more than settle the group table. It changed the mood around Belgium in one night.
That is why this Belgium Vs Senegal Prediction search is landing now. Belgium had been under pressure after a flat tournament start and had been called has beens, but Rudi Garcia answered that criticism head-on after the final whistle. He said he did not appreciate the label and argued that when a nation has players of that calibre, it should support them. The response came with performances, not just words: Kevin De Bruyne scored, Romelu Lukaku headed in 56 seconds after coming off the bench, and Charles De Ketelaere added the last goal.
The scoreline also matters because it finally broke a stubborn pattern. Belgium’s first team goal at the tournament came at the 45th attempt and after more than 200 minutes of labouring, so Trossard’s opener carried more weight than a routine breakthrough. He was one of Garcia’s four leaders, alongside De Bruyne, Lukaku and Thibaut Courtois, and the manager said all four are central to what Belgium are trying to build. In the same breath, he pointed to Jérémy Doku, De Ketelaere and Lukaku improving in fitness, while Zeno Debast was available for his first minutes of the competition after a leg injury.
That is the friction in Belgium’s position. The group-winning result was emphatic, but it came after criticism in the Belgian press for a flat display against Iran in Los Angeles, and Belgium had looked nothing like a team ready to sprint through the tournament before New Zealand. They had been unbeaten for 16 months before this match preview, their last defeat a 3-1 loss to Ukraine, and Garcia made clear he was not interested in dwelling on what had gone wrong before. “We wanted to end first in the group and this is what we did,” he said, adding that he wished Belgium had won more of their games but would not go back to the past.
Senegal offers a very different test. They finished third in a group with France, Norway and Iraq, which means Belgium now face an opponent that has already survived a difficult path to the knockout stage. Belgium, meanwhile, had already shown in March that their ceiling is high, beating Mauricio Pochettino’s side 5-2 in Atlanta, and their qualifying numbers were strong too, with an unbeaten run, 29 goals, back to back sixes and a 7-0 win over Liechtenstein. The question is no longer whether Belgium can score. It is whether the version that turned up against New Zealand is the one that carries into Wednesday and makes the last 32 look manageable.
