For most of the night in Seattle, Belgium looked done. Then, in four frantic minutes and one long VAR review, they weren't.
Two down
Senegal led 2-0 and looked the better side, with Habib Diarra opening the scoring in the 25th minute and Ismaïla Sarr — among the tournament's top scorers — doubling the lead after halftime, ESPN reported. Play had earlier been briefly halted when pitch invaders ran onto the field.
The comeback
Then Belgium struck twice late. Romelu Lukaku pulled one back in the 86th minute, and Youri Tielemans equalized in the 89th to force extra time, stunning a match that had seemed to be slipping away.
The decision
With a shootout looming after 118 scoreless minutes of extra time, Tielemans went down in the Senegal box after a challenge from Lamine Camara. The referee initially waved play on, but after a review lasting more than seven minutes, he reversed the call and awarded a penalty, France 24 reported — a decision Senegal's players furiously disputed. Tielemans converted in the 125th minute, one of the latest winning goals a World Cup match has seen, to make it 3-2.
What's next
Belgium advance to the next knockout round, where they are set to meet Bosnia and Herzegovina — a fixture reported for Levi's Stadium in the Bay Area, one of the North American tournament's venues. For Senegal, a disciplined run ended in the cruelest fashion, undone by a whistle in the final seconds of extra time. For Belgium, long dogged by big-tournament disappointment, it was a survival that felt, however ragged, like a turning point.
