Can the Red Devils reach the final of Euro 2016? It’s a poignant question after Belgium’s thumping 4-0 win over Hungary in the round of 16. Back in 1980, Belgium played the final of the European Championship in Italy, but yielded to a late strike from West Germany’s Kopfball-Ungeheuer, or the Header Beast, Horst Hrubesch. This time, Belgium’s golden generation, with Eden Hazard in a pivotal role, may be ready to deliver. Wales is up next in the quarter-finals.
The Belgians excelled against Hungary, displaying self-confidence and overarching coolness. They coalesced, at last, to play with a high tempo and verticality, two features for too long absent from the Belgian game. It was Chelsea's gifted midfielder Eden Hazard, who was the central figure in an absorbing 90 minutes, drifting and darting on the left wing. He displayed a virtuoso ability hitherto unseen for Belgium.
Enter the Hazard
First, stupendously – by passing to himself in the preceding move – Hazard assisted substitute striker Michy Batshuayi, who is moving to his Chelsea club for a fee of €40 million, for Belgium’s second goal. Hazard subsequently asked for a substitution, feeling a bit of bother to his thigh, but then scored a third with a dazzling, lacerating solo goal through the kernel of the Hungarian rearguard. His velocity and precision were too good for the 40-year-old Hungarian goalkeeper Gabor Kiraly.
During the game Hazard completed 11 dribbles, a feat not achieved since Brian Laudrup at Euro 1996 with Denmark against Turkey. After the break, he had a perfect passing completion rate of 100%, achieving an overall rate of 90%.
But statistics often detract from a beguiling football spectacle, because Hazard was a player in constant motion, with individual dribbles, ceaseless infiltration and devastating penetration, all executed with pace and precision. In short, football at its best, the game in Messi-anic proportions. For 90 minutes, Hazard belonged to the pantheon of modern football gods.
But therein lies the Hazard enigma: his excellence is too transitory in nature, often limited to a segment of the game, as a player who banks on flashes to impose his skills, often cutting inside from the left wing. He never sustains his endeavour for prolonged periods, or multiple matches for that matter.
Shaking off the blues
At Chelsea, the Belgian was almost an outcast this season, dragged down by the furore around Eva Carneiro and Jose Mourinho’s manic implosion, yet again in a third season. For 29 games, Hazard failed to score, vegetating on the left, or, when in the centre, completely idle.
In the Premier League, Hazard needed 2,192 minutes to register three assists, but in Euro 2016 he provided three in just 351 minutes, according to Opta Sports, a leading sports data firm. His renaissance boosts Belgium, because, ever since his debut for the senior team, Hazard had been peripheral. At youth level, he did well, in particular at the Under-17 European Championship in 2007.
The conundrum remains though. A gallimaufry of reasons may explain Hazard’s instantaneous inflammation in a Belgian shirt: coach Marc Wimots’s tactical nous is debatable, but stinging media criticism may have prickled the player. Hazard is also in pristine physical shape.
But, for Belgium and Hazard to flourish, it’s imperative that Kevin De Bruyne from Manchester City plays well. He is Belgium’s true midfield metronome, who orchestrates and orients the team’s game during the entire match. In a pre-Euro friendly, Hazard pushed De Bruyne to the wing, a line up that was repeated against Italy, but with little success.
De Bruyne was finally consecrated to his No 10 role against Hungary. Yet, Hazard transcended his illustrious colleague and masterminded Belgium’s best game of the tournament, which so far had been an undulation between the bad and the outright mediocre, a recurring pattern from the last World Cup for Belgium.
Wales cannot concede any space
In the round of 16 of the 2014 World Cup, Belgium engaged the United States of America in 120 minutes of outstanding fast-track football, with De Bruyne and Romelu Lukaku combining for two goals, but in the next round Belgium imploded, almost voluntarily, against Argentina and an early goal from Gonzalo Higuain.
Unlike the USA, the Argentinians denied Belgium any space. In the qualifiers for Euro 2016, Wales turned into effective space percolators as well when facing Belgium. They filtered and sucked the space out of the game, to great effect, drawing scoreless away in Brussels and winning 1-0 in Cardiff, albeit due to a defensive lapse from Belgium’s Radja Nainggolan.
Belgium has always struggled against opposition who build a bulwark around their own box, playing compact and in a block. In that sense, Wales may be sterner opponents than Portugal, who are on Belgium’s side of the draw and could face them in the semi-finals. Belgium’s ball circulation isn’t good enough to unpick Wales. James Chester, Chris Gunter and Joe Allen, all in Hazard’s left-channel zone of play, won’t offer him so much space as the Hungarians did, limiting the Belgian’s decisiveness and maneuvering space.
Hazard will need his artistry once more to decide a game with a split-second of ingenuity. That would be another step in proving he is a real star, who can perform consistently, another leap to the world of De Bruyne and Lionel Messi, or, if you like, a transformation from Hazard to "Wizard".
