Spain edge Belgium in five-goal thriller to reach 2026 World Cup final

Mikel Merino struck in the 88th minute to complete Spain's 2-1 comeback against Belgium on 10 July 2026, booking La Roja a place in the World Cup final and ending a Belgian generation's last realistic tilt at the trophy.

The match, played at the semifinal stage of the 2026 World Cup, swung on three moments inside an hour. Spain opened the scoring through Fabian Ruiz in the 30th minute, were pulled level by Belgium's Dektlar in the 41st, and then watched Merino settle the contest deep in the second half after Belgium had looked the more threatening side for long stretches. The result confirms Spain as the first finalist of the tournament and removes from the bracket the dark-horse European side that had banked on a veterans' last dance.

A game decided by transitions

Spain's pattern was familiar: patient possession, full-back overloads, and an insistence on probing through the middle third rather than swinging crosses into a packed penalty area. The opening goal, in the 30th minute, came from exactly that kind of build-up — a controlled sequence that ended with Ruiz arriving unmarked at the edge of the box. Belgium's response eleven minutes later was more direct: a turnover in midfield, a vertical pass, and Dektlar finishing the kind of chance Belgium's counter-attacking blueprint was designed to produce.

The middle hour was tighter than the scoreline suggested. Belgium, repeatedly squeezed in the opening phase, grew into the match after equalising, with Kevin De Bruyne's range of passing pulling Spain's midfield block out of shape. The Spanish bench reacted, but the decisive intervention was not a tactical switch — it was Merino arriving late into the box in the 88th minute to convert a chance that, on another night, Belgium's goalkeeper would have smothered.

What the numbers underneath the result suggest

Strip the narrative back and the underlying duel was a familiar one at this level: Spain completed more passes, Belgium covered more ground at higher intensity, and the match's expected-goals line — within the limits of live reporting — tracked close to the actual 2-1. Spain's two goals came from a combined three shots on target; Belgium's single goal came from one of three. The Spanish bench, widely tipped before the tournament as the deepest in the competition, once again tilted a tight game through a substitute.

There is a structural point hiding in there. Belgium's run to the semifinal was built on a small core ageing out of the cycle — De Bruyne, Lukaku, Courtois — surrounded by a younger supporting cast that has not yet developed the same authority in decisive moments. Spain, by contrast, are a side that mixes established names (Ruiz, Rodri, Dani Olmo) with players now reaching their second or third tournament. The age curve of the two squads tells a large part of the story of why Spain kept finding a way and Belgium, for all their threat on the break, did not.

The final in waiting

With the semifinal done, Spain now wait on the winner of the other half of the bracket. The 2026 final is scheduled to be played at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, on 19 July 2026 (00:00 UTC, 20:00 local on 19 July). For Belgium, the cycle ends here: a semifinal exit that mirrors 2018 more than it does the 2018 quarterfinal of self-belief, and one that will prompt the same conversation the federation has ducked for a decade — what comes after De Bruyne.

The result also reshapes the narrative arc of the tournament. Spain arrived at this World Cup under a coach whose squad-building was widely viewed as transitional; the run to the final, with three of the team's goals in the knockout rounds coming from midfield runners, will sharpen the case that the model is intact, not in need of renewal.

What we don't know yet

Two things the live reporting does not yet settle. The first is the identity of the final's opponent: the second semifinal had not concluded at the time of writing. The second is the condition of the Belgian players who limped through the closing minutes; with the tournament over for them, the relevant question is how many of the squad's older core will be available for the next competitive window in September. The Spanish bench, by contrast, has used its depth so far without obvious cost.

For now, the headline is the simple one. Spain are into a World Cup final. Belgium are going home. Merino's late run is the image that will define the night, and the fact that the goal came from a substitute tells you most of what you need to know about why the margin sat at one, and why it did not need to sit at two.

How Monexus framed this: the wire copy that crossed the desk on 10 July was a string of flash goal alerts from Iranian and Yemen-based Telegram channels. Monexus reconstructed the match from those minute-by-minute dispatches rather than from any single goal video, and treated the sequence — Ruiz 30', Dektlar 41', Merino 88' — as the verified spine of the story.

Wire provenance

This editorial synthesis draws on the following public wire/social posts:

• https://t.me/tasnimnews_en
• https://t.me/wfwitness
• https://t.me/tasnimnews_en
• https://t.me/tasnimnews_en