SEATTLE — One of the World Cup’s giants awaits the winner of the U.S. men’s national team’s Round of 16 match against Belgium.
Mikel Merino’s 91st-minute goal got Spain past Portugal in Dallas earlier Monday, ending Cristiano Ronaldo’s international career and setting up a potential quarterfinal clash against the USMNT.
If it comes to pass, that game — at 3 p.m. ET Friday in Los Angeles — would represent the biggest in the history of the national team, and a match in which the USMNT would be decided underdogs.
Though Spain has looked like its best self only for stretches of this World Cup, particularly its 3-0 win over Austria in the Round of 32, its overall quality, with superstar Lamine Yamal, as well as former Ballon d’Or winner Rodri, Pedri, Dani Olmo and Mikel Oyarzabal, is a level above anything the USMNT has seen at the World Cup, as well as anything on its roster.
Even on Monday, in a game where Spain didn’t quite look its best, it dominated possession against Portugal, spending the second half probing for a way through before Ferran Torres’ line-breaking pass found Merino in front of net.
The U.S. has played Spain only twice in competitive matches and once at the World Cup, all the way back in the 1950 group stage, which produced a 3-1 Spanish victory in Curitiba, Brazil.
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Fifty-nine years later in South Africa, a 2-0 USMNT victory in the Confederations Cup semifinal — over a Spanish team that went on to win the World Cup in the same country one summer later — represented one of the greatest wins in U.S. Soccer’s history.
A 4-0 friendly defeat in 2011 is the last match between the two countries.
If the U.S. were to make it as far as this quarterfinal, and were it to beat Spain, it would easily be the biggest win in the country’s men’s soccer history, and perhaps the most significant men’s sporting result in the country as a whole since the Miracle on Ice.
The USMNT last made a World Cup semifinal in 1930, when two wins in the group stage were enough to make it that far in the 13-team inaugural tournament.
Getting past Belgium first, however, is the priority.
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