Key events
It’s Ashour’s first international goal, on today of all days. He moved infield from the left to find some space and receive Salah’s angled pass on the edge of the D. After taking a quick touch infield, Ashour turned into the ball and sweet-spotted a sizzling drive into the net. Courtois dived to his right but was beaten for pace. That’s a cracking strike.
GOAL! Belgium 0-1 Egypt (Ashour 19)
Scratch that last entry: Emam Ashour has given Egypt the lead with a belter!
18 min Cagey stuff at Seattle Stadium. Belgium took a few minutes to get going but have been marginally the better team since then.
17 min Doku stays down for a little while after being cauight on the back of the calf by Hany. It was accidental but looked painful.
Doku is back on his feet now.
15 min And now Timothy Castagne is booked for pulling back Mo Salah. I hope Jason Alexander is watching.
13 min Ngoy strides out of defence with authority… until Attia sends him flying with an agricultural intervention. Attia is booked.
12 min Belgium are awarded their first corner after a race between De Ketelaere and Ibrahim, only for VAR to intervene when replays show the last touch was off De Ketelaere. That’s worked pretty well so far.
11 min “Arne Slot was writing Salah’s scripts this season,” says Niall Mullen. “Unfortunately, there were serious third act problems.”
The first act wasn’t exactly bothering the Tony awards either.
9 min Onana stays down for a bit after being caught by Salah. It was accidental rather than malicious, and Onana gets to his feet once the pain subsides.
7 min The first decent attempt at goal comes from Belgium, specifically Kevin De Bruyne. He receives a short square pass on the edge of the D, shapes to curl a shot towards the far corner and then reverses it towards the near post. It bounces a few yards wide.
Nice effort, though I think Shobeir had it covered.
5 min “I am officially a grumpy old man,” says Niall Mullen. “The pre-match pageantry is irritating me beyond reason. The insanely large flags, the giant Fifa logo, the tens of thousands of boxfresh replica kits in the crowd (who look like extras from a Coke advert). Someone should tell all of these people that football is actually really good which is why its popularity survives this nonsense.”
To be honest, I’m getting a bit wound up with all this negativity. Can we not knock it just chill, relax?
(You’re right, it’s ludicrous and unnecessary. But you can’t fight fate, or rampant avarice. Oh, and wait until you see the pre-match ceremonies in 2038.)
4 min A good, fast start from Egypt. No chances, not even a goshdarn corner, but they’ve been on the front foot.
3 min “He may have been on the bench, but it was heartening to see Guillermo Ochoa in the Mexico squad,” writes Matt Dony. “It’s not a World Cup without him. Conversely, it’s disappointing not to see Axel Witsel in the Belgium squad. One of those players I’d lose track of, then there he’d be, every two years, strutting around a major tournament, playing some nice passes and kicking some people. Time marches on. All things tend towards entropy. We’re all going to die. Hope it’s a good game!”
What have I told you about listening to that Flaming Lips song. Or was it Sufjan Stevens?
2 min Egypt have started with Salah as the No10 behind Marmoush, with Ziko on the right and Ashour on the left.
1 min Belgium kick off from left to right as we watch.
Just one more thing It’s Mo Salah’s 34th birthday today. Who writes his scripts these days?
The anthems have been belted out and the match is about to begin. With Romelu Lukaku starting on the bench – he’s barely played all season – Atalanta’s Charles De Ketelaere will play as a falseish nine.
“It’ll take some going for Spain v Cape Verde not to be my game of the tournament,” writes James Humphries, and he’s a Scotland supporter. “I could barely watch the last five minutes, and there was a lot of involuntary yelling and clapping. Football, bloody hell.
“It’s such a pure, pleasing underdog story I’m not even unduly bothered by the sudden realisation that cape Verde may very well end up getting more points than us.”
The story of day five has already been written
Egypt team guide
By Saher Ahmed
Egypt qualified for the World Cup unbeaten after missing out on Qatar 2022, booking their ticket to North America with a game to spare. They scored 19 goals in nine matches, as Mohamed Salah led the way with nine, conceded two goals and kept seven clean sheets. Despite the impressive numbers in qualifying, Egypt’s shape is pragmatic more than romantic and they carried that same muscle memory into the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations: tight games, deep stretches without the ball, quick release into Salah or Omar Marmoush. This was exposed by a semi-final defeat to Senegal, when Egypt were set up more to endure rather than to control.
Egypt will probably begin the World Cup in a 4-3-3 formation that becomes a 4-2-3-1 when they have to chase a game, while occasionally switching to a 3-5-2 against high blocks. Mohamed El-Shenawy is likely to start in goal, although Mostafa Shobeir has lately been giving the veteran a run for his money. The rest of the spine looks solid with Rami Rabia and either Hossam Abdelmaguid or Yasser Ibrahim in central defence. Marwan Attia and Hamdi Fathi will screen the backline and Emam Ashour will look to deliver the ball to the trio up front.
Egypt are cohesive, often hard to score against and emotionally committed, but they can still look blunt if opponents double up on Salah and the midfield cannot pass through the press. The draw placed Egypt in Group G with Belgium, Iran and New Zealand. Egypt have never won a World Cup match so ending that is the floor-level target.
Yara El-Shaboury
Last week Orange, one of Egypt’s leading mobile network operators, released a series of humorous adverts starring Egypt’s Ahmed Fatouh, Rami Rabia and Hossam Abdelmaguid, where the trio’s optimism is met with scepticism as partners and family members struggle to take them seriously. Their crime? Daring to suggest Egypt might finally progress beyond the group stage of a World Cup.
If there is one thing Egyptians do particularly well, it is self-deprecation. Perhaps that comes from history. Despite winning the Africa Cup of Nations seven times, Egypt are still waiting for their first World Cup victory. The Pharaohs will kick off their fourth appearance at the tournament against Belgium on Monday knowing they failed to win any of their seven matches so far.
That is the contradiction at the heart of Egyptian football. No African nation has won more continental titles, yet Egypt remain one of the continent’s World Cup underachievers. While other African nations aim to replicate Morocco’s 2022 semi-final success, many Egyptians would happily settle for something far more modest: a single group stage victory.
Team news
Belgium (4-2-3-1) Courtois; Meunier, Ngoy, Mechele, Ngoy, Castagne; Onana, Tielemans; Doku, De Bruyne, Trossard, De Ketelaere.
Subs: Lammens, Penders, Theate, De Cuyper, Witsel, Lukaku, Lukebakio, De Winter, Seys, Moreira, Vanaken, Saelemaekers, Raskin, Fernandez-Pardo.
Egypt (4-2-3-1) Shobeir; Hany, Fathy, Ibrahim, Fattouh; Lasheen, Attia; Salah, Ashour, Ziko; Marmoush.
Subs: El Shenawy, Soliman, Alaa, Abdelmaguid, Rabia, Abdelmoneim, Trezeguet, Abdelkarim, Hassan, Hafez, Donga, Adel, Saber, Alaa, Zizo.
Referee Ramon Abatti (Brazil)
Full time: Spain 0-0 Cape Verde
Yep, Spain 0-0 Cape Verde. There won’t be a more life-affirming goalless draw at this year’s World Cup; there may never have been one.
Belgium team guide
By Ludo Vandewalle
The head coach, Rudi Garcia, is well aware that the Red Devils’ strength lies in attack. Kevin De Bruyne, Jérémy Doku and Romelu Lukaku can each make a difference in their own way. The defence is, except for goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois, the weak point after the golden generation of Toby Alderweireld, Vincent Kompany, Thomas Vermaelen and Jan Vertonghen gradually retired. “That is why I will always choose four defenders and not five,” Garcia explains. “With five defenders I have to sacrifice an attacking player and that would be a shame.”
Garcia usually opts for a medium block to support the attack and not put too much pressure on the defenders. His reasoning could be described as flawed because there is a problem with Lukaku. He played only 64 minutes for Napoli this season and none for the national team because of injuries until coming off the bench in Tuesday night’s 2-0 win against Croatia, scoring the second goal in added time. He was also deeply affected by the death of his father. Belgium’s all time top scorer – 90 goals – will therefore start the World Cup without any kind of match rhythm.
The other teams in Group G are Iran and New Zealand, who meet in the last of today’s games.
Preamble
Hel and welcome to live, minute-by-minute coverage of Belgium v Egypt at Seattle Stadium. The 2026 World Cup is gathering pace – we’re already into day five, and by tomorrow morning 32 of the 48 teams will have been in action.
So far we’ve seen everything from potential winners to probable also-rans. It’s hard to know where Belgium and Egypt fit on that particular spectrum. Both are adjusting to life after a golden generation, or at least with a dwindling golden generation that no longer glisters as it once did. But they are still serious teams who could do damage in the competition.
This intriguing game should give us a clue as to the extent of that damage.
Kick off 12pm local/8pm BST/3pm EDT/5am AEST
