Belgium Dominate Every Stat Except the Score in 2026
Twenty-five minutes. That is how long Belgium played with a man advantage against Iran at the 2026 World Cup, and it barely changed the picture.
Belgium drew 0-0 with Iran at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, on June 21, 2026, in their second Group G match at the World Cup. Nathan Ngoy was sent off in the 66th minute for hauling down Mehdi Taremi, who was clear through on goal. Alireza Beiranvand made seven saves to keep Iran level until the final whistle. Belgium finished with 1.79 expected goals from 23 shots and still have not scored from open play in this tournament.
This was Belgium’s second straight match without a goal, stretching their World Cup drought to fifty-three shots without scoring since the 2022 tournament. Romelu Lukaku started his first match of this World Cup after a hamstring injury wiped out most of his club season at Napoli. He managed one shot in seventy-three minutes before Arthur Theate replaced him.
Rudi Garcia’s team did almost everything right and still has nothing to show for it.
Belgium lined up in their usual 4-2-3-1, with Kevin De Bruyne floating off Lukaku and width coming from Alexis Saelemaekers and Leandro Trossard. Iran sat in a back five, narrow and patient, daring Belgium to find a way through the middle. For an hour, Belgium did exactly what a good possession team is supposed to do. They worked the ball wide, pulled Iran’s back five apart, and got Maxim De Cuyper into the box again and again from the left. The problem was never the pattern. The problem was the final touch, and Beiranvand stopped three clear De Cuyper chances on his own.
Iran’s set-piece work was the difference between a flat defeat and a point worth celebrating. Ehsan Hajsafi’s free kicks and Iran’s long throws caused Belgium more trouble than anything in open play, with Hossein Kanani and Taremi both forcing saves from headers and volleys delivered exactly that way.
Then came the 66th minute.
Ngoy panicked under pressure from Taremi, gave the ball straight back to him, and dragged the striker down with the goal open in front of him. The tension inside SoFi Stadium turned in an instant. Belgium dropped to ten men with twenty-five minutes left. Garcia’s response was to bring on Theate for Lukaku and shift to a back five of his own, trading an attacker for cover. Iran, with a spare man and a tiring Belgium defense in front of them, brought on Mehdi Torabi and later Shahriyar Moghanloo but never raised the tempo to match the opportunity in front of them.
Here’s the thing Belgium actually had their best chances after going down to ten men, not before.
De Cuyper alone had three clear sights of goal in the final half hour, including a close-range effort in the 86th minute that Beiranvand somehow turned away. A full back was getting in behind a back five playing against ten men in midfield. Belgium walked off deflated anyway. That is not a system collapsing. That is wastefulness in front of goal.
Judge this by the numbers rather than the result, and Garcia set his team up well. Belgium had seventy percent of possession, almost three times Iran’s expected goals, and forty-two touches in the Iran box compared to fifteen. Iran arrived in Los Angeles having shifted their training base from Arizona to Mexico, operating under travel restrictions that send them out of the city within hours of the final whistle. Ghalenoei’s call to start the oldest lineup at a World Cup match since 1966, according to ESPN Research, was not caution out of fear. It was a deliberate bet that experience could hold a defensive shape together even with everything off the pitch working against his team, and for ninety-five minutes it held.
Garcia is the one running out of time here, not Ghalenoei. Belgium do not need a different game plan. They need a different runner in the six-yard box. Three times in the second half a Belgian player arrived at the back post a half-step behind the ball, including Brandon Mechele’s header in stoppage time that drifted wide of an open net. That is not a tactics problem. That is a personnel one: bring on a forward who attacks the near post early instead of waiting for the cross to find him, and at least one of those three chances becomes a goal instead of a near miss.
Belgium were better in every column that did not have a number attached to a goal.