{"id":141662,"date":"2025-11-15T18:58:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-15T18:58:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/141662\/"},"modified":"2025-11-15T18:58:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-15T18:58:11","slug":"kazakhstan-1-1-belgium-belgians-miss-chance-to-wrap-up-world-cup-qualification","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/141662\/","title":{"rendered":"Kazakhstan 1-1 Belgium: Belgians miss chance to wrap up World Cup qualification"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Belgium missed the chance to wrap up qualification for the 2026 World Cup with a game to spare as they were held to a surprise draw by Kazakhstan.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Belgians had thrashed the same opponents 6-0 in their first meeting in Group J in September, and would likely have expected another comfortable win in this fixture.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But instead they were stunned in the first half when Kazakhstan took the lead through 17-year-old Dastan Satpayev, who managed to squeeze home a shot at Matz Sels&#8217; near post.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Temirlan Anarbekov made some fine saves to keep out Belgium, but they managed to equalise early in the second half when Hans Vanaken headed in Timothy Castagne&#8217;s cross.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Kazakhstan, who were already eliminated from qualifying, were reduced to 10 men late on when Islam Chesnokov was sent off.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Manchester City&#8217;s Jeremy Doku sent a good chance wide as Belgium pushed for the winner that would seal automatic qualification but Kazakhstan defended well to secure the hugely impressive draw.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Belgium remain top of Group J and will cement qualification with a win at home to Liechtenstein on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">However, the result will give the chasing pack some hope with North Macedonia second, two points behind Belgium, and Wales third &#8211; they play Liechtenstein later on Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Belgium missed the chance to wrap up qualification for the 2026 World Cup with a game to spare&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":141663,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-141662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141662\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}