Daniel Munoz’s deflected strike was enough for Colombia to beat DR Congo and secure their place in the World Cup knockout stage.<\/p>\n
Roared on by the vast majority of the crowd in Guadalajara, Colombia missed a host of chances before Crystal Palace wing-back Munoz broke the deadlock in the 76th minute.<\/p>\n
Juan Fernando Quintero’s clever pass found its way to Munoz and his left-footed shot took a touch off the defender to wrong-foot DR Congo goalkeeper Lionel Mpasi and sneak in at the near post.<\/p>\n
A second straight win puts Colombia top of Group K and clinches their place in the last 32, while DR Congo are third and need to beat Uzbekistan in their last group game to have any chance of progressing.<\/p>\n
Match-winner Munoz was a threat throughout and should have put Colombia ahead inside four minutes, but put his close-range shot into the side netting after Jhon Arias’ shot had been parried into his path.<\/p>\n
Two minutes later, Munoz did bundle the ball into the net after his initial header was saved but, while it was very tight, he was just offside.<\/p>\n
Colombia continued were dominant during a relentless opening 20 minutes but could not find a way past Mpasi.<\/p>\n
They remained on top after half-time and Luis Diaz should have put them in front on 50 minutes, but could not find the net with just Mpasi to beat, while Arias dragged the follow-up wide.<\/p>\n
But just as it seemed it would be a night of frustration for Colombia, Quintero slid the ball into Munoz’s path and he beat Mpasi.<\/p>\n
DR Congo pushed for a leveller late on but Colombia held on for a deserved victory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Daniel Munoz’s deflected strike was enough for Colombia to beat DR Congo and secure their place in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":655261,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-655260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=655260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655260\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/655261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=655260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=655260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=655260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}