Leandro Trossard scored twice as Belgium booked their place in the World Cup knockout stage with a dominant win over New Zealand.<\/p>\n
In a must-win game for both sides, Belgium shook off two lacklustre displays to start the tournament and showed their superiority from the first whistle in Vancouver.<\/p>\n
Trossard opened the scoring in the 28th minute as New Zealand allowed a Kevin de Bruyne corner to bounce in the six-yard box, allowing the Arsenal forward to finish from close range after the ball had bounced off the back of defender Tim Payne.<\/p>\n
Rudi Garcia’s side could have been out of sight by half-time but it was not until five minutes after the break that they got their second.<\/p>\n
De Bruyne punched a pass into Trossard, his first shot was blocked but he volleyed the follow-up in smartly at the near post.<\/p>\n
The result was put beyond doubt in the 66th minute when De Bruyne drilled a crisp left-foot shot into the bottom corner from 20 yards.<\/p>\n
New Zealand got a goal back as Elijah Just thumped in his third goal of the tournament but Belgium’s three-goal lead was restored moments later as Romelu Lukaku headed in just 56 seconds after coming off the bench.<\/p>\n
Another substitute, Alexis Saelemaekers, added an extra shine to the scoreline as he slotted in the fifth in injury time.<\/p>\n
With Egypt failing to beat Iran,<\/a> Belgium top Group G on goal difference and will face a third-placed team<\/a> in the last 32 on Wednesday (21:00 BST).<\/p>\n Meanwhile, New Zealand bow out of their third World Cup after taking just one point from three games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Leandro Trossard scored twice as Belgium booked their place in the World Cup knockout stage with a dominant…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":660655,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-660654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660654","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=660654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660654\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/660655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=660654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=660654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=660654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}