If Mikel Merino is sleeping, please don’t wake him. If the last week has been a dream, he’d just as soon keep dreaming.

Because on Friday, for the second time in five days, Merino came off the bench for the final five minutes of a World Cup knockout game and scored the winning goal, the latest lifting Spain to a 2-1 victory over Belgium and into next week’s semifinal against France in Arlington, Texas.

“Not even in my wildest dreams could I have imagined what’s happening right now, right?” Merino said in Spanish. “Honestly, it’s crazy.”

How crazy? Merino has played less than 10 minutes in the last two games and has two goals. He’s taken four shots in the World Cup and put two of them in the back of the net, the first in stoppage time to beat Portugal in the Round of 16 and in the 88th minute Friday to beat Belgium in a quarterfinal and extend Spain’s unbeaten to streak to 36 games.

“I don’t really even know what to say. I still can’t quite believe it,” Merino said.

Yet Spain’s final substitution, which brought on Merino in the 86th minute, wasn’t the only one that figured heavily in the result. Fifteen minutes earlier Belgian coach Rudi Garcia sent backup goalkeeper Senne Lammens on for Thibaut Courtois — not by choice, by necessity.

The dropoff in talent wasn’t great — Lammens started 32 times for Manchester United this season — but the difference in experience was. Courtois was playing in his 21st World Cup game, second-most all-time, and he had been brilliant up to then.

But he tweaked a muscle making a save minutes earlier and dropped to the turf just before the second-half hydration break. After being attended to by the team’s trainers, he tried to continue but couldn’t, eventually hobbling to the sideline and collapsing on the bench in tears.

“We didn’t want his injury to get worse. That’s why I subbed him off,” Garcia said.

“It’s part and parcel of high-level sport. You need to be concentrated, 100% focused, and need to be able to perform. I did not want to put players on the pitch who were not 100%.”

The margin between Belgium and Spain, after all, is a small one, even if the teams took completely different routes to the quarterfinal.

Spain, which hadn’t gone past the Round of 16 in a World Cup since 2010 when it won its only title, had gone a record six games and 609 minutes without allowing a World Cup goal, dating to the group stage of the last tournament four years ago.

You could binge watch two seasons of “Abbott Elementary” in that time.

But if Spain, the reigning European champion, and goalkeeper Unai Simón were the immovable objects, Belgium, playing in the quarterfinals for the third time in four World Cups, was an unstoppable force. With 12 goals in the last three games, it entered the quarterfinals with the third-most goals in the tournament. And no team had taken more shots.

Spain struck first, with Fabián Ruiz giving La Roja a 1-0 lead with his first goal of the tournament in the 30th minute. The sequence started with Pedro Porro sending a cross into the box for Dani Olmo, whose shot was parried away by Courtois. But Ruiz pounced on the rebound and deflected a shot off defender Timothy Castagne and into the back of the net.

In any other game of this tournament, that would have been enough for Simón. But not against Belgium, which ended Spain’s shutout streak in the 41st minute on a brilliant header from Charles De Keterlaere, who shielded Pau Cubarsí with his body and one-hopped a Castagne cross past a flat-footed Simón for his third goal in two games.

“The record and the milestones are there,” Spanish coach Luis de la Fuente said of his goalkeeper’s record streak. “It’s been decades since the last record was set. And perhaps somebody will break the clean-sheet record.

“But it’s going to be many, many years before that happens.”

Belgium opened the game up a bit when Garcia brought Romelu Lukaku, the country’s all-time leading scorer, on at the hour mark. But Courtois was called to make two saves in the next three minutes and came up lame after the second.

Shorty after he came off, De la Fuente summoned Merino over.

“He didn’t say much to me,” Merino said. “He told me I was coming in as the No. 10. And then, as the game was coming to an end, he told me I was incredible.

“Those are the only two things he said to me.”

The first shot Lammens faced came moments later, when Cubarsí put a one-hop shot on goal from distance. The keeper dove to his right to stop it with both hands, but the ball skipped just before it reached he and Lammens had trouble with the rebound, pushing it toward the edge of the six-yard box for Merino, who tapped it in.

“Unfortunately, to beat a team of this caliber, you need luck on your side,” Garcia, the Belgian coach, said. And the stars didn’t align for us.”

So while Belgium goes home, Spain goes to Texas for Tuesday’s semifinal with France, the only team in the world ranked ahead of it.

“Ever since the World Cup started, everyone has been waiting for this match,” Spanish wunderkind Lamine Yamal said. “I’ve been really looking forward to it. To me, they’re the two best teams in the World Cup.

“If anyone can take on France with confidence, it’s us.”

Especially if Merino keeps dreaming.

Sports editor Iliana Limón Romero contributed to this story.

Oba Femi and Brock Lesnar’s feud will come to a head at SummerSlam in August, and the showdown has the potential to be WWE’s match of the year.

Femi beat Lesnar at WrestleMania 42 and led to “The Beast Incarnate” deciding to retire – at least for a moment – at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas. Lesnar made a dramatic return a few weeks later, challenging and beating Femi at Clash in Italy.

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At SummerSlam, Femi and Lesnar will do battle inside a Hell in a Cell.

WWE Hall of Famer John Bradshaw Layfield called the next meeting between Femi and Lesnar a “generational matchup.”

“I’ve never seen anything like Oba – well, I have. I’ve seen Brock,” he told Fox News Digital. “It’s very much the carbon copy of Brock coming in. Brock coming in was like, oh my God, who is this guy? The guy can even talk, and he’s gonna be one of the biggest stars in wrestling. Not only could he talk, he’s a really smart guy. Brock became one of the biggest draws in professional wrestling. He came one of the biggest draws in UFC. It’s an unbelievable story, and now you got somebody who can rival that character.

“This Oba Femi comes out with the silly little walk he does. Everyone kinda does it, it’s like The Bushwackers. But the whole arena does it. I was in Vegas and I didn’t want to go to the matches and deal with the traffic and deal with the backstage area, and so I kinda just watched it in a sports bar. I stood in the back where nobody could recognize me, and as soon as Oba came out, the entire sports bar was sitting there doing that Oba Femi dance. The guy is just unbelievably over.

“I really think that somewhere in the NFL this year, you’re going to see an entire NFL arena doing this dance. You’re gonna have somebody like Saquon Barkley or ‘King’ (Derrick Henry) or some of these guys do this dance, and it’s infectious. Once one of them does, one of these great running backs or wide receivers, or somebody scores a touchdown, that’s when I think you’re gonna see entire arenas doing it. I just think Oba Femi is lightning in a bottle and Brock has always been that way. This is, to me, a generational matchup.”

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SummerSlam will take place on Aug. 1 and 2 at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis.

Mike Trout last played in an All-Star Game seven years ago. It’s crazy, really. The best player of the previous decade, the link that ties Barry Bonds and Albert Pujols to Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani, has not taken an All-Star at-bat this decade.

Injuries, mostly. And he turns 35 next month.

Next week’s All-Star Game takes place in Philadelphia, about 40 miles north of Trout’s hometown of Millville, N.J. Major League Baseball reserves a potential All-Star roster spot or two each summer for distinguished players: Bryce Harper and Justin Verlander this year, Clayton Kershaw last year, Pujols and Miguel Cabrera in past years.

That could have been Trout’s spot this summer: a worthy honor for a three-time most valuable player, a local hero feted on the national stage the Angels have failed to provide him.

“I wouldn’t have done it,” Trout said.

Not even at home?

“It’s an honor to get voted in and represent the American League,” he said. “For me, I don’t want any handouts.”

Trout is an All-Star for the 12th time, the old-fashioned way: He earned it.

Fans voted him into the starting lineup, with the most final-round votes of any AL outfielder. His peers voted him as one of the top three outfielders in the AL.

“It means a lot,” he said. “I’ve been through a lot of hurdles, a lot of adversity. I put some hard work in, and I did not let up. I could have easily got down on myself and not pushed through it and not come back.

“I know what I am capable of. I know I have the confidence to get back to the player I used to be.”

His .874 OPS entering play Thursday ranks second among AL outfielders, a career season for many players. In 11 of his 14 full seasons — all but the previous three — he has posted a higher OPS.

In April, in a four-game series against the New York Yankees, Trout hit five home runs and drove in nine runs.

“Everything was clicking,” he said. “When I first came up, that’s how I felt the whole season.

“Just to be able to get that feeling back, that little spark, to know it’s still in there, it makes you feel pretty good.”

For him, so does playing in Philadelphia. The first time he played there with the Angels, Millville basically closed down for the night, and just about everyone in town boarded a bus to the game. Then Trout had an exceptionally rare experience, a visiting player cheered at the home of the boo.

Mark Gubicza can testify to that. Gubicza, the two-time All-Star pitcher and now the Angels’ television analyst, grew up in Philadelphia.

“I don’t care if you were God himself, if you were wearing a different color uniform, I was still booing you,” Gubicza said. “But he was cheered.”

Still is. Trout is a diehard Philadelphia Eagles fan, with his season tickets not in some climate-controlled luxury suite but along the sideline.

“The players all walk by him and say ‘Trouty!’ ” Gubicza said. “Before they all go out to get their heads beat in, they’re all saying hi.

“He’s not one of those guys that comes there to be seen. He’s going there to root. That’s why they love him: He’s one of us.”

Said Trout: “I know how passionate I am about the Eagles. From my experience as an Eagles fan, it’s just different.

“It’s like win or die.”

It’s not like that in Southern California, where almost no one listens to sports-talk radio, and where a nice day is always a day away.

No one would begrudge Trout for living year-round along the Orange County coast. (OK, maybe Philadelphia fans would.)

Roy Hallenbeck, Trout’s high school coach, remembered visiting years ago on what he called “a perfect day” and asking Trout how he could ever get tired of all that sunshine.

“Yeah, coach, I couldn’t live here,” Trout told him. “‘I need my seasons.”

Trout built a family home near his boyhood home. He built his Trout National golf resort, with a course designed by Tiger Woods, in Millville.

He is as loyal to the Angels as he is to Millville. He appreciates the team that “took a chance on a kid from a little town in southern New Jersey” and signed him to two nine-figure contract extensions.

Trout was the last Angels player to take a postseason at-bat, in 2014. Even amid baseball’s longest playoff drought, he still considers Anaheim a special place, and always will.

“It’s where it all began,” Trout said. “I think the fuel of people doubting us kind of makes it more of a fire for me to try to get back to the playoffs. I think that’s the biggest key for me.

“Could I take the easy way out and just leave? Yeah. But I think — I said this last year around this time, but it’s the same feeling I’ve been having — I really haven’t sat down and talked to anybody about it specifically, but I know there’s a time where, if things change, who knows? I don’t know. But, for me, right now, my focus is on trying to get this club back in the playoffs.”

At the All-Star Game, Trout might well hear Phillies fans beseech him to come play for the home team. However, Hallenbeck said, the hometown folks no longer are as strident in that long-held wish.

“I think the overriding sentiment of most people I talk with, even Phillies fans, is we would all — as people that know him, love him and care for him — love to watch him play relevant baseball in August and September,” Hallenbeck said. “It doesn’t matter where. It doesn’t matter who. Just being relevant late in the season would be something we would all love to see.

“Hopefully, it’s with the Angels. They’ve been so good to him. We’d love to see it there.”

So would we. In the meantime, in the absence of a World Series, Trout deserves to enjoy his homecoming game.