SEATTLE, June 26 -- Kerim Alajbegovic was eighteen years old and had been a senior international for less than a year when he lined up outside the Qatar penalty area in the twenty-ninth minute at Lumen Field and struck the ball past Mahmoud Abunada at the near post. The referee confirmed the goal. Bosnia-Herzegovina were ahead. The noise that followed was partly for the strike and partly for what it meant.

It meant they were going to the Round of 32.

Not immediately, of course. The mathematics still needed to resolve over the remaining sixty minutes. But the twenty-yard strike from the RB Salzburg midfielder opened a game Bosnia had to win to preserve their knockout hopes, and it did so with a precision that drained Qatar of anything th...