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Ruthless Belgium shows USMNT it must play complete game against top teams
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- Ruthless Belgium shows USMNT it must play complete game against top teams
ATLANTA — 39 minutes into Saturday's match between the United States and Belgium, U.S. fullback Antonee Robinson whipped a corner into the box and found midfielder Weston McKennie, who volleyed home from close range.
USMNT fans filling Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta erupted as the home team took a 1-0 lead.
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Up to this point, the United States had played with the intensity and quality needed to keep up with one of the strongest teams in the world.
"We started bad," Belgium head coach Rudi Garcia said after the game. "But it was also because USA was more aggressive than us."
Belgium's bad start didn't last much longer. The USMNT allowed a goal just before the halftime whistle, then proceeded to let in two more just 15 minutes into the second half. A brace from Belgian winger Dodi Lukébakio and a late goal from US striker Patrick Agyemang rounded out the scoring in a 5-2 Belgium win.
The first-half performance and the second half performance were two different stories. In one half, the US stayed level with a top-ranked team. In the other, they could barely keep up.
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"That's one of the things that we can work on, for sure," McKennie said. "Being able to stay consistent on how we start the game to how we finish it with the same intensity."
Containing Belgium's attacks on the wing became more difficult as time went on.
"He's a guy that you have to double team," Weah said of Belgium's star winger Jérémy Doku, who caused problems all night for the US. "So when you draw a player out, there's a player open, and I think they benefited off of that."
Belgium continued to take advantage of the United States' defensive missteps throughout the second half.
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On Belgium's second goal, three U.S. players collapsed onto Belgium's Alexis Saelmaekers, leaving no one around to contest Amadou Onana's first-time shot. Later, a poor touch from Sebastian Berhalter set up Lukébakio in the box to score Belgium's fifth goal of the night.
The United States has consistently been ranked inside FIFA's top 20 for the past few years, but has struggled against other top-ranked teams for some time now. To find the last time the USMNT defeated a team ranked in the top 10 you'd have to go all the way back to June 2015, when it beat the Netherlands and Germany in a five-day span.
Against ninth-ranked Belgium, the USMNT showed for a moment that it could compete with one of the best teams in the world. But only for a moment.
"It's a team that is one of the best in the world, the problem was to keep that intensity," head coach Mauricio Pochettino said. "In the moment that we match the intensity of Belgium, we were even and in some moments we were better."
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The United States will continue to face tough opponents leading up to the World Cup. It will face Portugal on Tuesday before taking on Senegal and Germany just before the World Cup. If they're going to prove they truly belong among the world's best, they'll need to put together more than just a solid 40 minutes.
"It's a good reality check for us," Pochettino said. "Because now is the moment to use this type of situation to improve."
Derek Oliveros is a student in the University of Georgia's Carmical Sports Media Institute.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Belgium teaches USMNT harsh lesson in 5-2 thrashing
