Eden Hazard, Vincent Kompany, Thibaut Courtois, Kevin De Bruyne, Romelu Lukaku, the list goes on. They’re just some of the star names from Belgium’s golden generation that wrote their name into the Red Devils’ history, finishing third at the 2018 World Cup.
While the vast majority of that glittering squad have now hung up their boots, there are a few stars remaining, still looking for one last taste of glory. The likes of Lukaku and De Bruyne remain key players at Napoli, but there’s a perception that the last of the golden generation are past their best.
They’re out to prove the doubters wrong at this summer’s World Cup. Sure, Belgium aren’t quite the same team that beat England to finish third in Russia, getting the better of Gareth Southgate’s men for the bronze medal, but there’s still a romantic hope they can go far in the competition.
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It’s no secret the most recent major tournament was a disaster for the Belgians, with Domenico Tedesco’s side dumped out of the 2024 European Championships by France after edging through their group with Romania, Ukraine and Slovakia. Real Madrid’s Courtois had fallen out with the head coach and was left out of the squad for the tournament, while Lukaku admitted he wanted to quit the team, claiming there was a toxic environment in the group.
Tedesco was relieved of his duties after the tournament, and French head coach Rudi Garcia was tasked with reigniting their fortunes ahead of the World Cup. Scott Coyne of the Belgian Football Podcast has given an insight into the current state of affairs in Belgium and why Hazard could have a say on this summer’s tournament, despite retiring from football in 2023.
“Absolutely,” he said when asked if it was last chance saloon for the final few members of the ‘Golden Generation’ this summer. “That’s the spine of the side. Obviously, Courtois, De Bruyne, and Lukaku, who have one more tournament in them and are going to have to, not only be fully fit, but perform at their best if Belgium are going to do well.
“What we’ve seen in their qualification for the World Cup has been, for the most part, unconvincing. And they’ve really been untested on the whole. They were in a qualification group where Wales were probably their stiffest competition by quite some distance and were always going to be.
“But that’s not enough really to kind of give us a gauge on where this side actually are at. Garcia is the second coach to have come in since [Roberto] Martinez left and it’s part of what is really a continuing transition. I mean, the work that Tedesco did didn’t generally go down that positively with the fan base, but I think he’s been kind of quite harshly treated.”
Belgium sneaked through their group at the recent European Championship and weren’t particularly convincing before they were knocked out by France. Tedesco was sacked after less than two years in the job, with Belgian fans wondering what would come next.
Coyne said: “I think history might remember that relatively short spell that Tedesco did positively because the one thing he did do was realise that they were essentially at the end of a major cycle. That this was going to have to be the beginning of something new, and that the process in itself is often long, longer than fans’ patience tends to be, and sometimes quite painful as well, with a lot of experimentation.
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“That’s exactly what we saw under Tedesco, this kind of wave of youth and players getting their first caps, which I think was a good thing, and it was certainly something that had to happen. But at the same time, you’re still looking to get results, and I think he did.
“I think just patience ran out a little bit, and there was a feeling that they needed to kind of make a change, because I think the confidence and the speed of the process probably was waning a little bit, rather than what he was actually doing in itself. On the whole, there were far more positives, than negatives to take out of what he did during a short time.
“Garcia’s come in, his appointment’s interesting insofar as there’s been a lot of change at the Belgian FA in the background. So Roberto Martínez leaves, a lot of staff leave with him, and then the FA then go on effectively what is a downsizing programme under a new sporting director, where they’re cutting costs, basically.”
Despite Belgium being somewhat of an unknown quantity heading into this summer’s tournament they still boast an array of Premier League talent, including Manchester United’s No.1 Senne Lammens, Aston Villa midfield duo Amadou Onana and Youri Tielemans and Manchester City’s electric winger Jeremy Doku, currently enjoying his best season for the club.
Although they don’t have the hype of the previous golden generation, they can also call on one of the country’s best-ever players – Eden Hazard – for vital tournament experience.
Coyne said: “Most of the side don’t come from the sort of background that a lot of the golden generation did. I think it’s very difficult for somebody to kind of fulfil that same role really on any level.
“I mean, it’s one of the reasons that Rudi Garcia has brought back in players like Axel Witsel, albeit on a short-term basis. And it’s more about having that experience and that presence in that camp to rub off on younger players than to be able to kind of go and play and contribute too much.
“I don’t think the expectation was that somebody like Axel’s going to get that much game time for obvious reasons, but just having him around.”
Thomas Tuchel has taken a similar approach in reintegrating Jordan Henderson into the Three Lions’ set-up, but England haven’t yet brought in one of their nation’s best-ever players to help the national side. While Belgium have given Hazard a call.
“It’s the same as being able to bring Eden Hazard into that kind of training environment as well and deliver some training sessions,” Coyne said. “He’s not officially part of Rudi’s coaching staff, but he has done some work in there because they know each other very, very well.
“There was an expectation that Hazard probably would join the staff. And who knows? I mean, there is still the possibility that he might join the staff to go to the tournament, just to be in there as well, because the influence of these players, it’s a very difficult thing to kind of put a value on in that.
“I think there are indications that some players who, given time, I think could step into what would be considered sort of a senior leadership role. They are still very, very reliant on De Bruyne and Lukaku as well.”
De Bruyne boasts 115 caps for his country, while Lukaku has scored an incredible 89 goals in 124 caps. In the international break, 17-year-old Nathan De Cat made his first bow for the senior team – not only one to watch in the future, but someone the Red Devils believe can make an impact this summer.
Of those players called up for recent international friendlies, just seven players had over 30 caps, with De Bruyne, Witsel, Thomas Meunier, Timothy Castagne, Tielemans, Lois Openda and Doku among the most experienced players in the squad, though the latter two players only have 33 and 41 caps respectively.
Despite their reliance on the likes of De Bruyne and Lukaku, the Red Devils’ expectations are low ahead of the World Cup, but that’s where previous teams have thrived.
“The thing they’ve built up historically, is they’ve always done better when they’ve had kind of no real expectation of them,” Coyne said. “And for a long time, up until probably the early 2000s, early mid-2000s, Belgium nationally had a reputation for being very good defensively and on the whole quite good in midfield.
“There was a good balance between the defensive side of the game and offensively in midfield. But it was always up top that the doubts were about, they always lacked world-class strikers.
“That was the thing that kind of held them back. The reason they did punch above their weight in a number of tournaments, pre the golden generation, was probably because the collective was greater than the sum of its parts.
“A series of coaches had really done very, very well, actually knitting together a really good team ethic. And that’s something people forget, that it is a team game.
“Everyone focuses on the stars and the any nation and always talks about them at the expense of kind of the collective unit. Belgium were very, very good at employing that, over a 20, 30-year period leading up to the golden generation, exceeding expectations at tournaments for that very reason.
“They then have a terrible Euro 2000, and off the back of that start to invest in their footballing infrastructure in a major way. That’s what leads to a kind of revolution and their coaching methods and their academies, with some of the Belgian club academies now some of the best ones in Europe.”
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