For an hour Spain did the thing Spain does: pass you dizzy, take the sting out of the game, and dare you to stay patient. SoFi Stadium got the possession clinic it paid for, and Fabian Ruiz rewarded it in the 30th minute, ghosting into the box to open the scoring and put Belgium exactly where the script wanted them. Chasing. This was Spain by numbers, the tournament's tidiest side flexing the control that had carried them to the last eight without conceding a single goal.

Then Charles De Ketelaere reminded everyone that a clean sheet is only clean until someone dirties it. His 41st-minute equalizer was the first goal Spain had conceded in the entire World Cup, and it was no accident: the man who put a brace past the USA in the round of sixteen has genuinely arrived, timing his run and his finish like a striker who has finally worked out what he is. Belgium, so often the team that talks a bigger game than it plays, actually looked the sharper side for a stretch, and Spain's aura of invincibility suddenly had a smudge on it.

So of course the winner came from the least Spanish thing imaginable: someone else's mistake. In the 88th minute Senne Lammens got a hand to a save he had no business spilling, palming the ball straight to Mikel Merino, who did what Merino always seems to do in the big moment and tucked away the rebound. Spain march on to meet France in the semifinal, glowing about a resilience they only half showed, while Belgium trudge off wondering how a goalkeeper's fumble ended their World Cup. Spain found a way. They just didn't find a good one.