World Cup 2026, Round of 32: England, Belgium and the United States Advance — but Only One of Them Controlled the Game

Three favourites went through, and none of them lost. On the surface that reads like a quiet evening at the World Cup — the seeds holding, the bracket behaving itself. Underneath, it was nothing of the sort. England needed the full ninety to shake off DR Congo, Belgium won a five-goal shootout with Senegal that could have gone either way, and only the United States did what a favourite is supposed to do to an underdog: take control of the game from the first whistle and refuse to give it back.

The pattern beneath the three results was the same question asked three different ways — can this team manage a match once it holds the lead? It is the skill the knockout rounds punish hardest, the one that decides tight ties before their drama does, and on this evidence two of the three sides still standing cannot yet do it.

England 2–1 DR Congo: through, but not in control

England’s shape is not the problem; their command of tempo is. Thomas Tuchel’s 4-2-3-1 is built to strangle a game — two holding midfielders screening the back four, Jude Bellingham given licence to arrive late, Harry Kane as the fixed reference point — and against Sébastien Desabre’s DR Congo it produced the goals it was designed to produce. What it did not produce was calm. A side that had barely conceded on the way here spent the closing half-hour inviting pressure it never needed to face.

DR Congo, back at a World Cup after more than half a century, are sharper in transition than their seeding suggests. Cédric Bakambu’s movement pulled England’s centre-backs apart, Chancel Mbemba stepped out to break the first line, and the careful English build-up kept collapsing into a scramble for second balls. When DR Congo halved the margin, England did not slow the game down and drain the clock — they traded, and a two-goal cushion turned into an anxious finish. They advanced. They still have not shown they can close a game out.

Belgium 3–2 Senegal: a front line that outscored its own flaw

If England were careless with a lead, Belgium never tried to hold one at all. Rudi Garcia has leaned into the single thing this squad still does better than almost anyone — attack through Kevin De Bruyne and Jeremy Doku, with Romelu Lukaku holding the line — and it delivered a game of pure transition that swung from one box to the other. Doku’s width dragged Senegal’s full-backs into spaces they could not cover; De Bruyne threaded the runners through; Lukaku finished what the pattern created.

But Pape Thiaw’s Senegal are at their most dangerous precisely when a match opens up, and this one opened all the way. Anchored by Kalidou Koulibaly and Idrissa Gueye, carrying Sadio Mané through what is likely his final World Cup, they twice punished the space in front of Belgium’s back four, where no proper midfield screen ever sat. Belgium’s forwards simply outscored the flaw. It worked here. Against a side that defends its own box better, the same open shape will not survive the night.

United States 2–0 Bosnia & Herzegovina: the day’s one act of control

And then the exception. Mauricio Pochettino’s United States did to Bosnia & Herzegovina what neither England nor Belgium could manage against their own opponents: they took the tempo out of the game and kept it in a drawer. The back three that folds into a 3-2-5 in possession handed the hosts a permanent extra man in central midfield, and Bosnia — organised around a 40-year-old Edin Džeko and built to strike on the counter — were never granted the transitions their whole plan depended on.

Christian Pulisic and Folarin Balogun stretched the width, Weston McKennie owned the middle, and the game was settled long before the second goal made the margin official. The two-goal scoreline flattered Bosnia rather than the United States. It was the most complete performance of the round and comfortably the least dramatic — which is exactly the point.

What it changes for the bracket

The road to the final narrows, and it narrows in a way that should unsettle two of these three. England and Belgium advanced on the quality of individuals — Kane, Bellingham, De Bruyne, Doku — rather than on the control of a game, and the last 16 is the stage where individual quality stops being enough on its own. The United States, playing at home under a manager who has spent his whole career teaching teams to dominate the ball, look the likeliest of the three to impose a plan rather than cling to a scoreline. The favourites are all still standing. Only one of them looked comfortable getting here.

Tags: wc26, Belgium, England, United States