When World Cup quarter-finalists Belgium last qualified for the tournament in 2002, the current squad were a disparate gaggle of schoolboys poised unknowingly on the brink of global stardom.
Eden Hazard, then a small, slender 11-year-old, was making a name for himself as a skilful winger with the junior sides of hometown club Royal Stade Brainois. Vincent Kompany, the current captain, was embarking on his youth career with Anderlecht, while Adnan Januzaj, the Manchester United winger, was only seven.
In their homes and football club social rooms, they will have watched on television as a side led by pugnacious midfielder Marc Wilmots progressed from the group phase, only to lose to Brazil in the last 16. Twelve years later, in Brazil, they are the players carrying the hopes of their country, and Wilmots is the figure urging them on from the technical area.
Twelve now play for leading Premier League clubs, while some – including Chelsea winger Hazard and the young goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois – are considered to be among the best players in the world.
“All the young players are suddenly playing abroad,” said experienced centre-back Daniel Van Buyten, the only player aged over 30 in the squad.
“They all used to play in Belgium. They were still good players, but only as good as the Belgian league.”
After years of expectation,
Belgium’s ‘golden generation’ have finally arrived on the global stage and against Lionel Messi’s Argentina today, they can truly fulfil their potential.
Belgian football has undergone a revolution in recent years, after former technical director Michel Sablon produced a radical blueprint for youth development in 2006, but the emergence of the current side also owes much to serendipity.
Most were well on their way to becoming professionals by the time Sablon’s proposals had taken effect, and several players – such as Hazard, Kevin Mirallas, Thomas Vermaelen and Jan Vertonghen – spent their formative years outside Belgium anyway.
After successive failures to qualify for the 2008 and 2012 European Championships and the 2010 World Cup in South Africa things finally clicked in qualifying for this year’s World Cup, where Belgium finished unbeaten, and now stand on the verge of equalling their best-ever performance at the tournament.