Saturday’s World Cup games

Argentina vs. Belgium

Time: 9 a.m. TV: ABC

Site: Brasilia

Outlook: Belgium coach Marc Wilmots is old enough to remember Diego Maradona dumbfounding four defenders and a goalie to stop the nation’s incredible run at the 1986 World Cup in the semifinals. What Maradona was to Argentina then, Lionel Messi is now.

Wilmots called Maradona “the player that struck us down and gave us bad memories. Fortunately, that is well in the past now.”

Messi wants to bring those memories back when Belgium plays Argentina in the quarterfinals today.

And Belgium knows he’s more than capable to score a similar goal to the one that knocked the team out in 1986, when Maradona took on four players, ran past them and rifled the ball past helpless goalkeeper Jean-Marie Pfaff.

At the time, Belgium was already over the moon to have made it that far. This time, the team thinks it’s far from done, Wilmots said.

“You should only think of one thing: make the final. That Belgium didn’t use to have that frame of mind is not my problem,” he said.

Belgium’s strong defense has been the key to its World Cup run so far, with Vincent Kompany, Daniel Van Buyten and Jan Vertonghen all among the team’s standout players.

Together, they should be able to deal with Messi, they said.

“If he gets past one player, he will have to get past a second player, because another will help out,” Van Buyten said. “We will have to show our big heart.”

Pfaff was the tournament’s standout goalie in 1986. Now Belgium has Thibaut Courtois, who has kept Messi scoreless the last seven times they faced each other in Spain.

Courtois has already had a spectacular season, winning the Spanish league title with Atletico Madrid and getting his team into the UEFA Champions League final against city rival Real Madrid.

Netherlands vs. Costa Rica

Time: 1 p.m. TV: ESPN

Site: Salvador

Outlook: Netherlands coach Louis van Gaal expects Costa Rica to play a similar brand of attacking football as Chile and Mexico used in their unsuccessful attempts to derail the Dutch World Cup campaign. He expects the same result, too.

Van Gaal wasn’t giving away tactics on the eve of his team’s quarterfinal clash with the World Cup’s biggest surprise package at Salvador’s Arena Fonte Nova.

But he is unlikely to change a formula that defeated Chile and Mexico – defending solidly and looking to strike on the counterattack. And if that doesn’t work, switching to a 4-3-3 formation and pushing forward in search of a goal.

“They play the same system and they try to attack in the same way and they try to exert pressure in the same way, so there are a lot of similarities,” Van Gaal said.

Van Gaal added that the quality of the Costa Rica players was “different” to the star-studded Chile lineup, but that does not mean that his team will be taking for granted a team that shocked the tournament by winning a group that also featured three former champions – Italy, England and Uruguay.

Photos and text by Associated Press