Wales vs. Belgium, Euro 2016: Live coverage and score updates

This one.

Almost certainly the best goal in the history of the universe, this. What a glorious thing it is.

Wales just beat a favorite, 3-1, to get to the Euro semifinals, and they did it without a Gareth Bale goal. Belgium has elite players, but they had no answers for Chris Coleman’s side. The fact of the matter is that Wales is a complete team, and they could go all the way to the final.

You wouldn’t be wrong to think that Wales was a minnow being carried by a global superstar. From the outside looking in, it would appear that Wales was all about Bale’s brilliance and 10 other guys trying to hold it together. Bale has either scored or assisted in 13 of Wales’s 21 goals in qualifying and in the final tournament. When you’re the world’s most expensive player playing for the world’s richest team, you naturally hold the spotlight.

It was a resounding success for Wales in the Euro 2016 quarterfinals, putting in a tremendous performance to beat Belgium 3-1 and advance to the semifinals. Despite going down early, Gareth Bale and Aaron Ramsey led the way in an inspirational team performance to not just overturn Belgium’s lead, but utterly outplay their opponents the rest of the way -- quickly equalizing, then scoring twice in the second half to secure the win, including Hal Robson-Kanu’s stunning winner.

The match got off to an blistering start, with both Wales and Belgium racing forward trying to find any opportunity to score that they could find. It was Belgium with the first truly great scoring chances, but a heroic stand from the Welsh defense saw them clear three straight Belgium shots off the line in the space of about five seconds, leaving everyone wondering how Belgium weren’t holding a lead in the sixth minute of the match.

This might be the best goal of Euro 2016 so far.

Chris Coleman’s side certainly don’t have the most complex of gameplans, relying on a deep-lying and compact defensive shape without the ball and the individual brilliance of Joe Allen, Aaron Ramsey and Gareth Bale with it. The strategy is simple but has proven undeniably effective, and they could well give Belgium a run for their money when they meet in Lille on Friday.

However, Belgium do still head into the match as favourites. Marc Wilmots’ side made a deeply unconvincing start to their campaign when they went down 2-0 to Italy in their group stage opener, though they appear to be building momentum. They’ve recorded convincing victories over the Republic of Ireland and Hungary to reach this stage, and confidence among the nation’s golden generation is sure to be high.

Wales is a +450 underdog to win in regulation in this quarterfinals matchup at sportsbooks monitored by OddsShark.com. A draw would pay +230, and Belgium is a -137 favorite to pick up a regulation win.

Entering the European Championship with a winless streak of four games and a 1-4-1 record over its last six games, Wales didn’t appear to be in top form heading into group play. But with wins over Slovakia and Russia, Wales came out on top of Group B, and followed that up with a 1-0 win in the Round of 16 over Northern Ireland.

Belgium beat Hungary 4-0 on Sunday to advance to the quarterfinals of Euro 2016. The score looks impressive, and some of their goals did too. But once again, the Red Devils failed to convince anyone that they’re getting the most out of their incredible talent.

Hungary are this tournament’s overachievers. More so than any of the other debutants, they were massive beneficiaries of a combination of the expanded tournament and luck. They were dropped into the qualifying group that was clearly the easiest one even before Greece collapsed, and even with Greece’s collapse, they finished third. The top two teams, Romania and Northern Ireland, scored four goals in seven games between them at this tournament.

Consider that Wales has always been a groomsman, never the groom. They border the country that invented the sport, and thanks to the decision to break up the Home Nations on the international stage, Wales got lost in the shuffle. The nation is the second smallest by both geography and population in the UK. The country is shaped by its subservience to its English neighbor, perpetually the butt of jokes about sheep. Wales has never even had the galvanizing nationalistic movement that has at times driven Ireland’s sense of itself and its place in history.

That inferiority complex carries over into soccer. While the likes of Ian Rush, Mark Hughes and Ryan Giggs have donned the red shirt of the Dragons, Wales has never been a contender on the European or global stage. Their brightest moment was qualification to the 1958 World Cup in Sweden. Less than 3,000 saw Terry Medwin bag the winner in the playoff against Hungary, sending the team through to the quarterfinals. The quarterfinals, of course, would be as far as the side would go, thanks to a single strike by a 17-year-old Brazilian kid by the name of Pelé—his first-ever World Cup goal.