U.S. hopes of a historic World Cup run on home soil shattered in loss to Belgium

SEATTLE — For three weeks, it was the best World Cup ever for the U.S.

The Americans scored more goals, won more games and generated more interest than any U.S. team in history. But all that glory gave way to grief Monday when a 4-1 loss to Belgium brought the U.S. crashing back to Earth.

Belgium never trailed, getting two first-half goals from Charles De Ketelaere and two in the second half from Hans Vanaken and Romelu Lukaku to clinch a spot in the tournament quarterfinals, where it will face Spain on Friday at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood. For the U.S., whose lone goal came from Malik Tillman, its World Cup ended in the round of 16 for a fourth straight time.

“Today,” midfielder Tyler Adams said, “wasn’t a good day.”

U.S. players Tim Ream, center, Malik Tillman, left, and Folarin Balogun react after Belgium’s third goal on Monday.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

The U.S. did win a knockout round game in the tournament for just the second time, but that came in a round of 32 necessitated by the World Cup’s expansion to 48 teams. All three tournament hosts, the U.S., Canada and Mexico, were eliminated in the round of 16.

“You get knocked out of a tournament, it doesn’t feel great,” Adams continued. “You start to think about what you could have done better. The best players in the world go through it. You put yourself in those situations to try to break through at this moment.

“It sucks.”

U.S. coach Mauricio Pochettino said the U.S. didn’t live up to its potential.

“We didn’t show our real quality as a team,” Pochettino. “Never were we connected with the game. We were never in the flow of the game. It wasn’t our day in a collective or individual way.”

Switching to Spanish, Pochettino added, “It’s not that it hurts me in one way or another. What hurts me is the elimination.”

The run-up to Monday’s game was clouded by the controversy surrounding U.S. striker Folarin Balogun, the Americans’ leading scorer, who wasn’t officially cleared to play until about seven hours before kickoff after FIFA rejected an appeal from the Royal Belgium Football Assn. The association was seeking to overturn an unusual ruling from the FIFA disciplinary committee, which on Sunday made Balogun eligible to play despite the fact he was shown a red card and expelled from his team’s previous game.

The red card also carried with it a ban from the team’s next game — in this case, the Belgium match — but FIFA suspended that penalty and imposed a one-year probation instead. It was just the second time in World Cup history — and the first since 1962 — that FIFA has held a red-card suspension in abeyance and allowed a player to participate in his team’s next game.

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Balogun was active Monday, going the full 90 minutes, but Belgium kept him from getting on the scoreboard.

Belgium was on the front foot from the start, taking six shots and putting two on target in the first eight minutes before going ahead on De Ketelaere’s first goal in the ninth minute. De Ketelaere, starting over the more physical Lukaku, Belgium’s all-time leading scorer, got free on the edge of the six-yard box and ran onto a centering pass from Nicolas Raskin, then made the easy tap-in for his first World Cup goal.

The goal marked the first time the U.S. trailed in the first half-hour of a game in this tournament and it was also the earliest goal the U.S. had given up in a World Cup game since Nani scored for Portugal in the fifth minute of the second group-stage game in Brazil in 2014.

The U.S. matched that in the 31st minute when Tillman deflected a free kick in off the head of Vanaken following a foul on Balogun. It was Tillman’s second free-kick goal in as many games, making him the second player since 1966 to score twice off direct free-kick goals in the same World Cup.

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But the draw was short-lived, with De Ketelaere putting Belgium in front, where they would stay, two minutes later with his second score of the first half, this one a header over the back of U.S. captain Tim Ream. Leandro Trossard got the assist, bending a perfect back-post cross from the end line to his waiting teammate.

Belgium added to the lead early in the second half on a major error from goalie Matt Freese, who had given up just one goal in his first three starts. On this one, he came well off his line to beat De Ketelaere to a loose ball, chesting it to the turf before allowing De Ketelaere to poke a toe out and knock the ball back to Vanaken, who skipped a shot from about 30 yards past the retreating Ream and into the vacant goal.

After the goal, U.S. star Christian Pulisic was subbed out after sustaining a right ankle injury while attempting a shot. He was limping on the field before being replaced by Sebastian Berhalter.

Lukaku, who came on in the 67th minute, closed out the scoring with a goal in stoppage time.

U.S. goalkeeper Matt Freese reacts after Belgium midfielder Hans Vanaken (not shown) scored against him in the second half of Belgium’s 4-1 win at the World Cup on Monday.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

“They punished us for our mistakes. That’s how international football goes, it’s how [the] World Cup goes,” defender Chris Richards said. “I think this tournament was an eye-opener in a lot of ways.

“Right now it just hurts.”

But tomorrow — or a week from now — Ream hopes the team can celebrate the influence its World Cup run made on the sport and the country.

“We knew what kind of impact we would be able to have as long as we played well, and the performances were there, and we were winning games,” he said. “Obviously, that all comes to a halt now. But I don’t think the conversation changes.

“There’s boys and girls who were watching and being inspired. I’m sure people will say, ‘Oh, it‘s now going to die down?’ I don’t think that the conversation should die down. I think it should be [about] how incredible this journey has been with this group. How can we keep the conversation going?”

Deputy sports editor Ed Guzman contributed to this story.