MY HOMEPAGE

BELGIUM vs RUSSIA

Match Report below

Match Stats: -

Man of the Match: Marc Wilmots (Belgium)

Teams:

Belgium:
                1-Geert De Vlieger
                5-Nico Van Kerckhoven
              16-Daniel Van Buyten
                3-Glen de Boeck (4-Eric Van Meir 90)
              15-Jacky Peters
              11-Gert Verheyen (6-Timmy Simons 79)
              18-Yves Vanderhaeghe
              10-Johan Walem
                8-Bart Goor
              22-Mbo Mpenza (9-Wesley Sonck 70)
                7-Marc Wilmots

Russia:
                1-Ruslan Nigmatullin
                2-Yuri Kovtun
                3-Yuri Nikiforov (18-Dmitry Sennikov 42)
                7-Viktor Onopko
                5-Andrei Solomatin
                4-Alexei Smertin (22-Dmitry Sychev 34)
                8-Valery Karpin (16-Alexander Kerzhakov 84)
                9-Yegor Titov
              21-Dmitry Khokhlov
              11-Vladimir Beschastnykh
              15-Dmitry Alenichev

Referee: Kim Milton Neilsen (Denmark)
Linesmen: Philip Sharp (England) Komaleeswaran Sankar (Indonesia)

Match Report: -

Belgium dig deep to find a win over the Russians which makes them leap frog Russia in the table and taking Belgium through top the next round. Three goals were needed to secure the very valuable 3 points as Belgium now prepare to take on Brazil in the first match of the knockout stages.

Russia didn't play incredibly well and were soon 1-0 after 7 minutes through a fabulous free kick into the very top right hand corner, any further up or to the right and it would have hit the woodwork.

Belgium make a big step towards the world cup but are now, facing a very tough prospect of having to beat Brazil to progress to the quarter finals.