The story of how Belgium went from no-hopers to world number one

EVERY NATION has its own particular idiosyncrasies and Belgium is no exception.

Yet in some quarters, the Belgians are being written off already. The squad is too old in some people’s estimation. Euro 2016, when they suffered a shock quarter-final defeat to Wales, and the 2018 World Cup, when they narrowly lost out to eventual winners France in the semi-finals, were widely seen as their best opportunities to claim some silverware. They did not disgrace themselves at Euro 2020 either, again losing to the soon-to-be champions, Italy, 2-1 in the quarters.

To appreciate the psychology of this Belgium team fully, you need to understand their history in the sport as well as the national psyche. A new book, ‘Golden: Why Belgian Football is More Than One Generation’ by James Kelly, attempts to do just that. It’s also perhaps no surprise given that their population is considerably less than the Netherlands and France .

“I spoke to a couple of Belgian fans who knew they were playing Wales, and it was in Lille just over the border. For a lot of them, it was just a quick hour drive,” Kelly tells The42. “When they reached the final in 1980, for example, there was actually an article during the qualifying for that tournament in one of the newspapers that said: ‘We should disband the national team.’ Because they had just drawn 1-1 with Norway – at the time, they were semi-professional.

But while they are not most people’s favourites to triumph this time around, generally over the past decade, the Belgian national team have improved exponentially. “I grew up with the team of Emile Mpenza and Walter Baseggio, that team frames a lot of the perception of Belgium historically haven’t been very good at football, because obviously, that team was dreadful,” says Kelly.

“They brought through a load more coaches, they made the cheapest, most entry-level coaching free for people to do. And so the idea was, if you improve the quality of the coaches, you will improve the quality of the players.Reports From Qatar Get Gavin's exclusive writing and analysis from the 2022 Fifa World Cup“But it’s the sort of thing where people do debate it because if you look at the majority of the squad, this generation were developed either under Genk or Standard Liege.

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