For 30 riotous, raucous minutes at the King Baudouin Stadium, you could convince yourself that everything was fine. Everything was coming off: Leandro Trossard found the top corner from 25 yards. Leander Dendoncker piled one in from distance. Kevin De Bruyne was having one of those games where he simply does whatever he wants. With virtually the last kick, the explosive 21-year-old Club Brugge striker Lois Openda scored a debut goal. Final score: Belgium 6-1 Poland. Normal service spectacularly resumed.
Everyone was having so much fun that it was almost possible to forget the humiliation that had taken place on the same pitch just five nights earlier. Against their neighbours the Netherlands, Belgium did not so much implode as disappear, deservedly losing 4-1. Afterwards Louis van Gaal – who you suspect has never quite forgiven Belgium for turning him down for the national team job in 2016 – crowed imperiously about how his side had “one player extra in every position on the pitch”.
It was Belgium’s heaviest home defeat in 14 years and for all the catharsis of the Poland win, as they prepare to face Wales in Cardiff on Saturday night, Roberto Martínez’s side are encountering some new and discomforting questions. Was it a blip? Was it a wake-up call, as Martínez insisted? Or for an ageing team that lost their world No 1 ranking earlier this year, was it the first sign of a slow and inexorable decline?
On the face of things, the Belgians remain an irresistible force. They have scored in an astonishing 46 consecutive games since losing the 2018 World Cup semi-final to France. Six years into the job Martínez remains a resilient and popular coach, having established a club-like mentality, kept faith in a recognised core of world-class players, drilled a familiar system and an attractive attacking style.
And with five months remaining until the World Cup there can be little doubt that Belgium remain among the favourites. In Thibaut Courtois and De Bruyne they have two players widely considered the best in the world in their position. Eden Hazard has made a heartening return to form. Romelu Lukaku would still walk into most major international teams. For now, the golden generation is still just about in business.
And yet defeat by the Netherlands, which followed a disappointing Nations League finals campaign in October, has exposed cracks in the edifice. There have been flawed draws against Wales and the Republic of Ireland, routine victories against teams such as Burkina Faso and Estonia. But since eliminating Portugal in the last 16 of Euro 2020, they have played four games against top-10 opposition – France, the Netherlands and two against Italy – and lost the lot.
For a Belgian public gorged on the feats of their greatest-ever side, these are not fresh concerns. Almost from the moment they emerged, the golden generation carried not simply the hopes of a nation, but also its agony and angst. What constitutes success? What constitutes failure? What comes after? In recent months, however, a certain mournful despondency also seems to have taken hold: the idea that this is already a team wilting at the edges, a team whose best chance has already been squandered.
“Without a trophy, we climbed to first place in the Fifa rankings,” the former national team coach George Leekens told So Foot magazine last year. “But this first rank means nothing. When you don’t dare to do things, nothing is with you. This mentality and this will to win does not exist in Martínez’s group.” The former Anderlecht coach Aad de Mos has written off Belgium’s chances in Qatar. “I saw Argentina and Brazil play this week, the Belgians can no longer do that,” he said. “It is over. They have no chance.”
The primary area of concern is in defence, where Benfica’s Jan Vertonghen and Al-Duhail’s Toby Alderweireld are still plugging away, serenely untroubled by competitors. Defensive organisation has long been Martínez’s achilles heel – dating back to his time at Wigan and Everton – and with his veteran centre-halves in gentle recession, there is a sense that his favoured 3-4-3 invites too much pressure on the penalty area. For a top side, a record of one clean sheet in eight matches bodes ill.
Further forward, admittedly, the picture is brighter. There is still competition for places, and promising youngsters such as Openda, Jeremy Doku and Charles De Ketelaere are poised to step into the breach if – as expected – Hazard and Lukaku retire after the World Cup. “I’ve heard things like: ‘It’s over, we’ll never win anything again, behind this generation there isn’t much,’” the 20-year-old Doku said in December. “I have confidence. We are not going to become zero all of a sudden.”
For now, though, Belgium are very much a two-tier squad, with a nucleus of grizzled veterans, a smattering of youngsters, but not much in between. Vertonghen will be 35 by the time of the World Cup, Alderweireld and Axel Witsel 33, Hazard and De Bruyne 31, Courtois 30, Lukaku and Yannick Carrasco 29. Arguably the 25-year-old Youri Tielemans is the only first-choice player in his peak years.
There is a certain irony in that it was a spectacular 4-2 victory against the Netherlands in 2012 that truly ushered in the age of the golden generation. A decade on, the final curtain awaits. And so to Cardiff, the beginning of a six-month countdown that – one way of the other – feels like the end of something.
