Spain beat Portugal 1-0 in World Cup round of 16 match, with Arsenal striker Mikel Merino scoring in injury time from an assist from Ferran Torres, both substitute players. Spain is now in World Cup quarter finals for the first time since 2010, where they also beat Portugal 1-0 in round of 16 and ended up winning the competition, and they remain the only team in World Cup to have not conceded a goal.
Athletic Club goalkeeper Unai Simón broke the World Cup record during last week match against Austria, and now he extends it to six World Cup matches with a clean sheet, counting all five matches so far this year (0-0 Cap Verde, 4-0 Saudi Arabia, 1-0 Uruguay, 3-0 Austria, 1-0 Portugal) and the 0-0 against Morocco in 2022 (in which Morocco qualified in penalties). No other goalkeeper, nor team, in World Cup history, have kept six clean sheets in a row.
But if we count minutes, Simón has now been 609 consecutive minutes without conceding a goal in World Cup. The count starts with with the last 39 minutes of the group stage match against Japan in 2022, and the 120 minutes in the 0-0 against Morocco in round of 16 in 2022 (which was decided in penalties, but those do not count for this statistic), plus the last 450 minutes of the five matches played so far.
This way, Simón breaks the previous record of most time without conceding a goal in World Cup, by Walter Zenga, for Italy in 1990: 517 minutes, broken with a goal by Argentina in the semi-final (which Italy lost, eventually West Germany won that year).
Spain will next face Belgium on Friday, July 10, at 21 CEST, 20 BST, which thrashed USA 4-1.