And yet, they remain the only nation to keep this place without ever gaining a big trophy.
“In general, this generation definitely had what was needed to achieve the great goal of winning a title,” says Jean-Marie Pfaff, the hero goalkeeper who was part of the team that reached the 1980 European Championship final and the 1986 World Cup semifinals.
“Unfortunately, that didn’t work out because players rarely played like a real team, with one player competing for another. The burden was on some individual shoulders, which wasn’t enough.”
Belgium was brilliant at the 2018 World Cup-dollarness Brazil in the quarterfinals to be agonizingly short in the semi-finals against the possible champions of France.
But throughout the hype and hope, that was as good as it was. Like 2016, the Euro 2020 ended in the quarterfinals. The 2022 World Cup saw them fall in the group’s stages in the midst of retirement, the resignation of Roberto Martinez and talking about breaches between the team.
The former Member -Radja Nainggolan Campaign was reported as admitting that they were a team of many people trying to stand out.
He continued under the replacement of Martinez, the young former Leipzig, Domenico Tedesco. Logo Courtois placed himself in self-imposed exile, citing a lack of confidence in the new manager.
“The team actually had a very good qualification campaign for the Euro 2024,” says Bart Lagae, a journalist of Standaard’s Belgian newspaper.
“It surprised people because, with Hazard and others, they thought the gold generation was over.
“But there was a new manager with a new system, new players like Jeremy Doku, who thrived against it.”
But after an unbeaten path to Germany, the tournament ended with the defeat in the last 16 for France. They had scraped only for the knockouts after a draw with Ukraine who saw fans turning the side in Stuttgart.
“Things did not progress,” adds Pfaff. “The performances stagnated, there was no sign of development and the results were not right.
“The main players were missing with a lack of injuries and there were repeated internal differences, which did not help to be important and were a constant disruptive factor.”
