One simply can’t play Italy the way Belgium did in their opening game at Euro 2016: the Belgians were disjointed and displayed little tactical intelligence. The Squadra Azzurra remains the Squadra, even when short of start quality in the absence of Marco Verratti. They played with a marvellous professional application – perfectionists in their organisation, cerebrally unperturbed, and lethal when required.
Italy’s performance was vintage; Belgium’s performance, not so much – not just a glitch, but possibly a result with profound recriminations. Against Ireland, Belgium regained their composure. Coach Marc Wilmots enforced three changes with Thomas Meunier, Moussa Dembele and Yannick-Carrasco coming into the first eleven.
At Bordeaux on Saturday, Belgium played freely, pressing forward and executing a risk-inclined game plan. Romelu Lukaku and Axel Witsel liberated Belgium in a dominant display of free-flowing football against a limited Martin O’Neill side.
The Red Devils were among the tournament favourites going into Euro 2016, no longer merely the dark horses they were at the last World Cup. Belgium’s starting lineup on both occasions featured seven players from the English Premier League, begging the question why they played so feebly against Italy because, in spite of the disappointing defeat, their talent is irrefutable, courtesy of a rebuilding process in the early noughties.
The renaissance
Back in 2000, Michel Sablon was vexed in the stands of Brussels’ King Baudouin Stadium. He had just witnessed the archetypical collapse of Belgium against Turkey in a crucial group stage game of Euro 2000. Belgium had begun the match with a startling intensity and a great velocity, but, slowly, the hosts faded. Their game, in general, was reactive. Goalkeeper Filip De Wilde’s gaffe and Hakan Sukur’s goalscoring nous sped up Belgium’s exit from the tournament.
In many ways, the elimination was a repeat performance of their campaign at the 1998 World Cup in France. The Belgians applied a good degree of professionalism to their endeavours, but ultimately, the players were limited, lacking imagination and lustre.
In the late 1990s Belgian football had indeed been a mediocre muddle, drained by partisan interests and the lack of an overarching vision. After the Euro 2000 elimination, Michel D’Hooghe, the long-standing FIFA Executive Committee member and then the president of the Belgian FA, the KBVB, felt exasperated. He tasked Sablon, Belgium’s assistant-coach at the World Cups of Mexico 86, Italy 90 and USA 94, to reconfigure the way the game was played.
Sablon, in his role of new technical director, instigated a revolution, based on a new tactical formation, individual player development and institutional change. He asked universities and research units to X-ray the Belgian football landscape. Backed by plenty of scientific data, Sablon and a core of committees and loyalists opted, after much rumination, for a 4-3-3 formation as both the salvation and way forward for Belgian football, both at youth level and senior level. The renaissance had to be an operation from the grassroots level up.
A generation sui generis
They didn’t envisage a "Cruyffian" 4-3-3, which would have been a modern version of Total Football, but wanted to employ the formation to implement a singular Belgian playing style, with an emphasis on individual player skills. The 4-3-3 offers dynamism, with a flat four in defence, plenty of triangulation options in midfield, and wingers who dribble past their direct opponents, according to Sablon.
He designed a simple six-point competence model to canvass new talent – winning mentality, emotional stability, personality, explosiveness, insight into the game, and ball and body control were the requirements for a player to become a part of Belgium’s brimming generation.
Sablon persuaded the Belgian clubs, in the Flemish and Walloon hinterland, often fragmented by parochialism, to stick to his blueprint. In 2007, the first signs of success arrived, with Eden Hazard and Christian Benteke debuting for Les Diablotins at the U17 European Championship. They progressed to the semi-finals, where they fell to Spain after penalties. At the Beijing Olympics, a year later, Vincent Kompany, Thomas Vermaelen, Marouane Fellaini, Jan Vertonghen, Moussa Dembélé and the Belgian team finished finished fourth.
This was a heterogeneous group of players with ancestral roots across Africa and both a skill set and aplomb hitherto unseen in Belgium – a generation sui generis. They had a dainty swiftness and conscious swagger in their game, all executed with an overarching sangfroid.
Unfulfilled potential
At the 2014 World Cup, the much-heralded Belgians – the boys had turned into men – disappointed, except for 120 minutes of fast and furious football against the United States. The Red Devils lacked both shape and strategy, which Gonzalo Higuain and Argentina exploited in the quarter-finals.
Fast forward to Euro 2016. Amorphousness remains Belgium’s Achilles Heel, resulting in numerous deficiencies across the field: without the injured Kompany the defence is rudderless, Witsel often slows down the play in midfield, and up front Lukaku doesn’t really suit Belgium’s 4-3-3 formation. The recent tousle between Eden Hazard and Kevin De Bruyne for the No. 10 position exacerbates those problems. After four years in charge, coach Marc Wilmots has added little value to the team.
Antonio Conte and Italy had outmanoeuvred Belgium, who were devoid even of a game plan, let alone a backup strategy. But the Belgians assuaged those nagging issues against Ireland. They no longer looked like simply the sum of eleven individuals, but were a galvanised team.
The Belgians' sheer individual class should suffice to topple Sweden and Zlatan Ibrahimovic in their final group game and ensure a second place, but this generation’s true merit must lie in winning against a top tier nation in the knockout phase. After all, they did crash out at the quarter-finals of the 2014 World Cup after a loss to Argentina, which must be put firmly the past.
The potential of the Red Devils, however, will remain. It is even unquestionable, much so the result of Sablon’s vision for youth development. Today, Sablon is working for Singapore’s FA as a technical director. His colleagues Jan Van Winckel and Eric Abrams hold the same role in Saudi Arabia and Australia, respectively. Asian countries recognise the value of Belgium's development model; India would do well to do so too.
