When USA were drawn with Belgium in the Round of 16, it immediately stirred memories of their famous encounter in Brazil 2014, which took place the same stage of the global showpiece.
The Stars and Stripes came up just short in their bid to reach the World Cup quarter-finals for the first time since Korea/Japan 2002 as goalkeeper Tim Howard made a staggering 16 saves in extra time.
Incredibly, four Belgium players from that victory will be part of the team who take on Mauricio Pochettino's men in Seattle on Monday — Thibaut Courtois, Kevin De Bruyne, Romelu Lukaku and Axel Witsel.
Despite Belgium defeating the USA 5-2 in a March friendly, it promises to be . The Stars and Stripes are hugely confident of victory and will now have star striker Folarin Balogun available after his red card against Bosnia and Herzegovina was overturned. Meanwhile, the Red Devils have come into their own after a slow start to their campaign.
Ahead of the crunch clash, former USA coach Jurgen Klinsmann — who is part of FIFA's Technical Study Group that is studying World Cup 2026 — spoke to FIFA about his memories of Brazil 2014, Howard's iconic performance and what a USA victory would mean.
Jurgen Klinsmann: I would slightly put Belgium as a favourite because of their history and the quality of the team. They also had a friendly [in March] where they looked really strong against the US, winning 5-2 so I give the favourite role to Belgium. But the US team has matured and has an incredible amount of confidence now as well as a belief through being the home team and on a good run. They have set a bar for themselves in the first half against Paraguay in the opening game and if they get close to that level of play, they are capable of being Belgium.
Their experience. They know when to step it up and raise the bar. They have players who can make a difference in a split-second. They are used to these kinds of situations, it's a tournament team. They are not the big favourites [to win the World Cup] but they can hurt every favourite in the tournament if they want to. It's a team of quality and experience and they will not be intimidated by 70,000-80,000 fans cheering against them. That's just a normal day in the office for them.
Absolutely. We went in with the belief that we could beat them because we proved in the group stage that we could hurt the big ones. We almost beat Portugal, we were 2-1 up until the 94th minute against [Cristiano] Ronaldo and Co in Manaus. Then we would have been first in the group before a game against Germany, who we almost hurt with a couple of really good chances that we had in that match [a 1-0 defeat].
Going through that 'Group of Death' gave us the confidence that we could beat Belgium. Even if they were the dominant team that day and created more chances than we did, we still had our chances to score. Obviously. Tim Howard had a fantastic game and save us on many occasions. If we put in one of those chances, maybe we would have had the chance to go to a penalty shootout.
It was exceptional. Those days as a goalkeeper you always keep in your memories and you can tell many stories about that game to your grandkids at one point. It was fantastic, we were super-proud of Tim. And we were proud of the entire team of what they achieved in Brazil. But there was definitely a chance to beat Belgium in that Round of 16.
It would mean a lot because the game has been consistently growing over the past three or four decades. Since 1990, there have been so many milestones that the programme went through in the United States and it would add another milestone in that process to soccer in the US and it would be fantastic. The game is hugely popular everywhere but going into another round of the World Cup would give it another boost.
Sources: FIFA Official
