INGLEWOOD, Calif. (AP) \u2014 Belgium goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois left his team\u2019s World Cup quarterfinal loss to Spain on Friday in the second half with an apparent injury.<\/p>\n
Courtois was in tears on the Belgium sideline after he was replaced by Senne Lammens in the 71st minute of a 1-1 match. Spain went on to win 2-1 and reach the semifinals.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re not happy when you have to leave a quarterfinal of a World Cup,\u201d said Courtois, who made four saves before departing.<\/p>\n
The longtime Real Madrid keeper went down to the grass with what appeared to be a thigh injury four minutes before his substitution, and he received treatment during the hydration break. Courtois said he felt a pain in his muscle on a long kick at the start of the second half.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen I did some saves, I felt OK, so I thought, \u2018OK, we\u2019ll continue.\u2019 Then I kicked again long and I felt a bit more so then you know it\u2019s something muscular and you need to be careful,\u201d he said. \u201cI wanted to try to play maybe five, 10 more minutes to see because in goal I was feeling good, I was making the saves and I was not disturbed. I was only disturbed to kick long.\u201d<\/p>\n
The injury didn\u2019t improve enough for Courtois to continue, and Belgium replaced him with Lammens, the Manchester United keeper who had not yet played at the World Cup.<\/p>\n
Lammens then spilled a long shot from Pau Cubars\u00ed in the 88th minute and Mikel Merino scored off the rebound to send Spain to the semifinals and a match against France.<\/p>\n
\u201cI gave him a big hug, much more I cannot do in the moment,\u201d Courtois said. \u201cHe\u2019s a great goalkeeper. He will only get stronger from this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Courtois was appearing in his 21st World Cup match, the second-most in tournament history for goalkeepers behind Germany\u2019s Manuel Neuer.<\/p>\n
Courtois made 10 saves and allowed five goals in Belgium\u2019s first five matches at this year\u2019s World Cup.<\/p>\n
Fabi\u00e1n Ruiz scored in the 30th minute for Spain, but Belgium forward Charles De Ketelaere scored the first goal allowed by Spain in the entire World Cup in the 41st minute.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re very proud of everything we\u2019ve done,\u201d Courtois said. \u201cWe are a small country of not even 12 million people that on big tournaments are showing amazing things.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"INGLEWOOD, Calif. (AP) \u2014 Belgium goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois left his team\u2019s World Cup quarterfinal loss to Spain on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":793864,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,14990,561,82],"class_list":["post-793863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fifa-world-cup","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=793863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793863\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/793864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=793863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=793863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=793863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}