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Morocco pulled off yet another World Cup shock on Sunday, and Belgium's aging "Golden Generation" took the hit this time.

The 2-0 upset left Kevin de Bruyne and the 2018 semifinalists in peril of a group-stage exit at what is likely the final World Cup for a highly-talented Belgian group that hasn't managed to convert their promise into prizes.

It might now be too late.

De Bruyne didn't drive Belgium forward against Morocco, captain Eden Hazard was taken off after an hour, and goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois was probably at fault for the opening goal.

"We haven't seen the best Belgium yet," said Roberto Martinez, a Spaniard who has coached the team for six years. "We haven't been ourselves."

Belgium could have become the second team behind defending champion France to advance to the last 16 if it beat Morocco. But it dropped from first to third in Group F and now plays against 2018 World Cup finalist Croatia trying to avoid its earliest elimination since 1998.

Morocco captain Romain Saiss gave his team the lead with a barely noticeable deflection off his hip after a free kick from Abdelhamid Sabiri in the 73rd minute that got under the body of Courtois — for many, the best goalkeeper in the world.

Zakaria Aboukhlal guided a shot into the roof of the net off a pass from Hakim Ziyech in stoppage time to make it 2-0 as Belgium's defense, boasting more than 300 international appearances but anchored by two players in their mid-30s, was beaten by a speedy 22-year-old forward playing at his first World Cup.

Morocco's players kneeled and pressed their heads to the ground in prayer, then leapt up in celebration. Pulling himself up from the ground, Courtois just shook his head.

The second big upset at the first World Cup in the Middle East involved another Arabic nation. Saudi Arabia defeated Argentina in the opening set of group games.

Morocco, which was roared on by thunderous noise from its fans at Al Thumama Stadium, had started in Qatar with a promising 0-0 draw with Croatia.

"We are delighted with that after Croatia and Belgium," Morocco coach Walid Regragui said. "That's absolutely outstanding for Morocco."

Belgium, ranked No. 2 in the world behind Brazil, had won its last seven group games at the World Cup before the upset, but that included a labored 1-0 win over Canada to open this year's tournament.

Even De Bruyne said in a media interview before the World Cup that Belgium's squad was likely too old to win now.

"I don't think any comments will affect a result or a performance," Martinez said, dismissing the suggestion that De Bruyne's interview might have unsettled Belgium.

Morocco had to make a change right before kickoff when goalkeeper Yassine Bounou felt unwell but the North Africans were unaffected and clinched their first win at a World Cup since 1998 and only their third ever. Morocco moved to four points and Croatia is also on four points after beating Canada later Sunday. Belgium has three points and Canada has been eliminated.

Morocco has only ever been past the group stage once at a World Cup, in 1986. And things were in turmoil ahead of the tournament after former coach Vahid Halilhodzic was fired and Regragui was brought in at the end of August, less than three months before the World Cup. Regragui had only three friendlies to make his mark on the team before facing Croatia at the World Cup.

Ziyech recalled

Regragui immediately recalled Ziyech, a Chelsea winger who was exiled from the team under Halilhodzic because of a rift between them. Ziyech curled in a disallowed free kick in the first half, set up the second goal, and was Morocco's best player against Belgium.

Belgian desperation

Martinez brought on forward Romelu Lukaku, the country's record scorer, as a substitute with less than 10 minutes to go in a desperate attempt to get one back when it was 1-0. Lukaku is only just returning from a left thigh problem and Belgium has missed him dearly. Martinez might be forced to start him against Croatia.

Who scored?

Sabiri was initially credited with the first goal from his free kick, but FIFA later amended the official match report to give it to Saiss.

What's next?

The final group games are on Thursday, when Morocco will come back to Al Thumama Stadium to play Canada. Belgium will face Croatia at the same time.

AL KHOR, Qatar (AP) — Soccer powerhouses Belgium and Germany made early exits at the World Cup on Thursday, which many considered a wild day in group play.

Back-to-back early exits at the World Cup have Germany coach Hansi Flick wanting to go back to basics.

The four-time champions were again eliminated from the group stage four years after their embarrassing display as defending champions in Russia.

Something has to change, Flick said after a 4-2 victory over Costa Rica on Thursday that still wasn’t enough to secure a spot in the round of 16.

“I believe for the future of German football we need to do things differently in training,” said Flick, who took over as coach after last year’s European Championship. “For years we are talking about new goalkeepers and wingbacks, but Germany was always able to defend well. We need the basics.

“For the future, for the next 10 years, it is very important to focus on the new generation of players.”

It was only eight years ago that Germany won its fourth World Cup title, beating an Argentina team led by Lionel Messi in his prime in the final at the Maracana Stadium. With that victory, Germany became the only European team to win a World Cup in either North or South America.

In Qatar, it was an opening loss to Japan that set the stage for the disappointing finish this time. Germany was beaten 2-1 in that match last week, and followed it with a 1-1 draw against Spain.

That gave the Germans a chance in its last match at Al Bayt Stadium, and for a few minutes during the simultaneous final group matches on Thursday, it was enough. At halftime, for example, Germany was beating Costa Rica and Japan was losing to Spain — results that would have put the Germans into the round of 16.

It was Japan’s 2-1 victory over the Spaniards that essentially cost the Germans a chance to play at least one more match in Qatar.

Flick cited Spain as an example for his country to follow.

“Spain is very good in defense,” he said, even though the 2010 World Cup champions ultimately lost to Japan at the Khalifa International Stadium in Doha. “It focuses on training young players. They know the tactics well.”

It all started so well for Germany on Thursday with Serge Gnabry scoring a 10th-minute header and Spain taking an early lead against Japan.

Both matches were turned upside down in the second half.

Yeltsin Tejeda evened the score in the 58th minute and Juan Vargas scrambled another in the 70th, putting Costa Rica ahead 2-1 and all of a sudden on target to advance.

“There were a lot of individual mistakes and these are things that make me very angry,” Flick said.

But Germany substitute Kai Havertz made it 2-2 in the 73rd minute and then restored Germany’s lead in the 85th. Another substitute, Niclas Füllkrug, added the fourth.

Costa Rica had lost its opening game against Spain 7-0. The team then put on a much better display and beat Japan 1-0.

“We are not what we saw in our first game,” Costa Rica coach Luis Fernando Suarez said. “We had to go back to what made us qualify for the World Cup.”

Spain will take on Morocco, who took the top spot in Group F after defeating Canada 2-1, ESPN reported.

Belgium, ranked No. 2 in the world and finished third at the World Cup four years ago, was also eliminated from the world's biggest sporting event after a goalless tie against Croatia, who will play Japan in the round of 16, The Washington Post reported.

HISTORY MADE

The match was also notable because French referee Stéphanie Frappart became the first woman to officiate a men’s World Cup match.

RECORD SET

Manuel Neuer played in his 19th World Cup match to set a record for a goalkeeper — overtaking German great Sepp Maier and Brazil keeper Cláudio Taffarel.

GINTER’S WAIT

Matthias Ginter was participating in his third World Cup, but going into the match against Costa Rica he had yet to play a single minute at any of those tournaments. That all changed when he came on as a substitute in the 89th minute.

The immigration process includes years of hurdles to get to citizenship, from the initial application to getting a green card, needing to legally hold it for three to five years and then actually going through the naturalization process.

Newsy's Ben Schamisso and 25 other immigrants became U.S. citizens at a federal courthouse in Chicago last Friday. It was a solemn and emotional moment years in the making.

"I took the oath and that was it, so I am an American citizen and it feels pretty good, Schamisso said. "It's a new day."

Because his wife is American, he was able to move to the U.S. from Belgium in 2015 with a green card.

He's been qualified for citizenship since 2018 but only started filling out the 20-page naturalization form in late 2020. At the time, the Trump administration planned to soon double the filing fee from $640 to nearly $1,200. The fee hike never materialized, but it did push him to apply.

A year later, Schamisso received an appointment for the infamous naturalization interview, when applicants are tested on their knowledge of English and civics. During the civics part, an officer asks 10 questions from a list of 100, and test-takers need six correct answers to pass.  

A 2018 national survey found that only one in three Americans would pass the test. He passed with one "frustrating" wrong answer.

“The question was, ‘What are the three first words of the U.S. Constitution?’ and I said quickly, ‘We are the people.’ Then I said, ‘No, it's actually we the people,' but that was too late," Schamisso said.

The interview also includes dozens of questions about the applicant's background. 

"About whether I was a member of any terrorist organization or a communist, or whether I had committed any crime, whether I had spent time in jail," Schamisso said. "Every single crime you can think of, they asked if I had committed it.” 

In the end, it was all worth it, with Schamisso saying the ceremony alone made him proud of the achievement. The U.S. government naturalized about 625,000 new citizens in the fiscal year 2020, and more than 7.3 million immigrants over the last decade.  

While Schamisso is from Europe, most naturalized Americans hail from Mexico, India, and the Philippines.  

The case of his, with his wife sponsoring him, is how it goes in about 28% of cases. Come November, he'll be allowed to vote in U.S. elections for the first time as a new American. 

This story was originally published by Ben Schamisso of Newsy

BRUSSELS — Belgium is holding a day of mourning for the victims of last week's devastating floods, while German Chancellor Angela Merkel is making her second visit to the region worst hit by the disaster that left nearly 200 people dead in the two nations.

The Belgian king and queen visited the eastern town of Verviers on Tuesday to console people who had lost loved ones or most of their possessions as torrents swept through villages in eastern Belgium, taking at least 31 lives.

In Germany, 165 people have been confirmed dead.

Authorities said they were likely to find more victims among destroyed homes.

During her tour of the damage in the village of Schuld on Tuesday, Merkel called the scene "surreal" and "ghostly."

"It is shocking — I would almost say that the German language barely has words for the devastation that has been wreaked," Merkel said at a news conference in a nearby town.

Merkel said authorities will work to "set the world right again in this beautiful region, step by step," and her Cabinet will approve an immediate and medium-term financial aid program on Wednesday.

Weather officials had forecast the downpours that led to even small rivers swelling rapidly, but warnings of potentially catastrophic damage didn't appear to have made it to many people in affected areas — often in the middle of the night.

Local authorities "tried very quickly to react," said interior minister Roger Lewentz.

"But this was an explosion of the water in moments. ... You can have the very best preparations and warning situations (but) if warning equipment is destroyed and carried away with buildings, then that is a very difficult situation."

Cellphone networks also were knocked out by flooding.

Federal and state authorities faced criticism from some opposition politicians over the disaster, which comes as a national election looms in September.

BERLIN —

In one flooded German town, the ground collapsed under family homes. In another, floodwaters swept through an assisted living center, killing 12.

Rescue workers across Germany and Belgium rushed Friday to prevent more deaths from some of the Continent's worst flooding in years as the number of dead surpassed 125 and the search went on for hundreds of missing people.

Fueled by days of heavy rain, the floodwaters also left thousands of Germans homeless after their dwellings were destroyed or deemed to be at risk, and elected officials began to worry about the lingering economic effects from lost homes and businesses.

Elsewhere in Europe, dikes on swollen rivers were at risk of collapsing, and crews raced to reinforce flood barriers.

Sixty-three people perished in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, including 12 residents of an assisted living facility for disabled people in the town of Sinzig who were surprised by a sudden rush of water from the nearby Ahr River, authorities said.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said he was “stunned” by the devastation and pledged support to the families of those killed and to cities and towns facing significant damage.

“In the hour of need, our country stands together,” Steinmeier said in a televised statement. “It’s important that we show solidarity for those from whom the flood has taken everything.”

By Friday evening, waters were receding across much of the affected regions, but officials feared that more bodies might be found in cars and trucks that were swept away.

A harrowing rescue effort unfolded in the German town of Erftstadt, southwest of Cologne, where people were trapped when the ground gave way and their homes collapsed.

Fifty people were rescued from their houses, county administrator Frank Rock told German broadcaster n-tv. Aerial photos showed what appeared to be a massive landslide at a gravel pit on the town’s edge.

“One has to assume that under the circumstances some people didn’t manage to escape,” Rock said.

Authorities cautioned that the large number of missing could stem from duplicated reports and difficulties reaching people because of closed roads and disrupted phone service.

After Germany, where the death toll stood at 106, Belgium was the hardest hit. The country confirmed the deaths of 20 people, with another 20 still missing, Belgian Interior Minister Annelies Verlinden told the VRT network Friday.

Several dikes on the Meuse River that runs from Belgium into the Netherlands were at risk of collapsing, Verlinden said. Authorities in the southern Dutch town of Venlo evacuated 200 hospital patients due to the river's looming threat.

Utility companies reported widespread disruption of electricity and gas service that they said could last for days or weeks.

The governor of North Rhine-Westphalia, who hopes to succeed Chancellor Angela Merkel as the nation's leader after Germany's election on Sept. 26, said the disaster had caused immense economic damage to the country's most populous state. The number of dead in North Rhine-Westphalia stood at 43.

“The floods have literally pulled the ground from beneath many people’s feet,” Gov. Armin Laschet said at a news conference. "They lost their houses, farms or businesses.”

Manfred Pesch, a hotel owner in the small village of Gemuend, recounted how the floods came suddenly and rose to 2 meters (over 6 feet).

“Our hotel needs to be rebuilt,” he said. “We need a lot of help.”

Wolfgang Meyer, owner of a painting business in Gemuend, said his family escaped the rising water, but his business was swamped.

“The machinery, equipment, the entire office, files, records ... everything is gone actually," he said. "We’re going to have some work to do there.”

Malu Dreyer, the governor of Rhineland-Palatinate state, said the disaster showed the need to speed up efforts to curb global warming, which experts say could make such disasters more frequent.

She accused Laschet and Merkel’s center-right Union bloc of hindering efforts to achieve greater greenhouse gas reductions in Germany, Europe’s biggest economy and a major emitter of planet-warming gases.

“Climate change isn’t abstract anymore. We are experiencing it up close and painfully,” she told the Funke media group.

Steinmeier, the German president, echoed her calls for greater efforts to combat global warming.

“Only if we decisively take up the fight against climate change will we be able to limit the extreme weather conditions we are now experiencing,” he said.

The World Meteorological Organization said some parts of Western Europe have received up to two months of rainfall in the space of two days.

"What made it worse is that the soils were already saturated by previous rainfall,” WMO spokesperson Clare Nullis said.

She said it was too soon to blame the floods and preceding heat wave on rising global temperatures but added: “Climate change is already increasing the frequency of extreme events. And many single events have been shown to be made worse by global warming.”

The German military deployed over 850 troops to help with flood efforts, and the need for help was growing, Defense Ministry spokesman Arne Collatz said. He said the ministry had triggered a “military disaster alarm.”

Italy sent civil protection officials, firefighters and rescue dinghies to Belgium to help in the search for missing people.

In the southern Dutch province of Limburg, which also has been hit hard by flooding, troops piled sandbags to strengthen a 1.1-kilometer (0.7 mile) stretch of dike along the Maas River, and police helped evacuate low-lying neighborhoods.

Caretaker Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said the government was officially declaring flooded regions disaster areas, making businesses and residents eligible for compensation. Dutch King Willem-Alexander visited the region Thursday night and called the scenes “heartbreaking.”

Meanwhile, heavy rain in Switzerland caused several rivers and lakes to burst their banks. Public broadcaster SRF reported that a flash flood swept away cars, flooded basements and destroyed small bridges late Thursday in the northern villages of Schleitheim und Beggingen.

Erik Schulz, the mayor of the hard-hit German city of Hagen, 50 kilometers (31 miles) northeast of Cologne, said a wave of other regions and ordinary citizens were offering to help.

“We have many, many citizens saying ‘I can offer a place to stay. Where can I go to help? ... Where can I bring my shovel and bucket?’” he told n-tv. “The city is standing together, and you can feel that."

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Associated Press writers Geir Moulson and Emily Schultheis in Berlin, Raf Casert in Brussels, Nicole Winfield in Rome, Angela Charlton in Paris, Mike Corder in The Hague and contributed to this report.