The Belgian team has recently been recognized as one of the favorites of almost all major international tournaments. With the likes of Kevin De Bruyne, Romelu Lukaku, Eden Hazard, Thibaut Courtois and head coach Roberto Martinez on their roster, the Red Devils could count on at least one World Cup or European win, but it never happened to them.

At the 2022 World Cup held in Qatar, the Belgians sensationally failed to qualify for the playoffs and finished third in the group with Morocco, Croatia and Canada. If before the World Cup began, fans and experts predicted that De Bruyne, Hazard and Lukaku would fight for the Golden Boot, then after the Red Devils’ path ended in the tournament, everyone was horrified. Well-known team leaders even scored a goal… So it is not surprising that after the end of the 2022 World Cup, laudatory criticism accompanied Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappe, Sofia Amrabat and many other heroes of the Qatar World Cup, not a single one among them. The Belgian was right.

But what happened to Belgium in Qatar? Why did the “golden generation” led by Roberto Martinez frankly fall into a puddle? And what makes us conclude that the failure of the “Red Devils” at the 2022 World Cup is actually inevitable?

All that will be discussed further, of course, are only author’s versions and conjectures, but they at least somehow explain the failure of the Belgians, and this is exactly what we did not expect from Roberto Martinez. The resigning Spanish expert said only loudly that if Belgium had made it to the playoffs, then the audience would have seen the true strength of the Red Devils there, but they did not shake their fists after a fight, and therefore such statements. It was seen as inappropriate by a respected mentor, to put it mildly.

In fact, a lot of things went wrong for the Belgians in the beginning in Qatar. After a minimal 1-0 win against Canada with a hit shot by Fenerbahçe striker Misha Batshuayi, a scandalous interview with Manchester City’s offensive midfielder and one of the leaders of the Belgian national team appeared in the English press. team, Kevin De Bruyne. In it, the midfielder admitted that the “golden belt” of the team is getting old, and the young people who are in a hurry to replace him are not yet at a high enough level to achieve serious results. From this, De Bruyne concluded that Belgium’s best chance of winning the World Cup was the 2018 tournament, where Roberto Martinez’s men finished third. But at the World Cup in Qatar, Kevin described the Belgians as weak.

The publication of this interview in the open spaces of the authoritative The Guardian heralded a real disaster for the Belgian team in Qatar. Already in the second round of the group stage, the Red Devils sensationally lost to Morocco (0: 2), after which the team’s central defender Jan Vertonghen, reacting to De Bruyne’s words, was “too old” in the national team, not just the attacking players, the defender . In the authoritative European media, many references were immediately made to a high-profile scandal in the Belgian national team that resulted in a fight in the locker room between De Bruyne and Vertonghen, which was mentioned earlier. Lukaku had to separate the fighters who coped with his task, but no one could bring this team together – neither Romel nor Roberto Martinez …

Players also collected numerous complaints about the latter during the competitive process in Qatar. The fact is that the Spanish coach decided to arrange the “Red Devils” base 150 kilometers from Doha, and this is a very reasonable distance by the standards of the Asian country hosting the 2022 World Cup. Martinez wanted his players to focus on preparing for matches as much as possible, and for several weeks while the World Cup was being played, contact with relatives and relatives was reduced to almost zero.

Martinez’s decision only fueled the fire, given that the vast majority of other teams participating in the 2022 World Cup finals were accommodated in Doha within 20 minutes, allowing players to see their families more often. By his decision, the head coach of the Belgium national team never reached the desired maximum concentration of players in tournament duties, but only aggravated the psychological crisis and the pressure on the majority of the players who felt isolated.

In this context, we can safely say about another factor that Martinez did not take into account – in the last few years, the vast majority of the players of the Belgium national team received numerous compliments at their address and also believed in them. The exclusivity that gave rise to the phrase “golden generation”, describing the composition of “red demons”, that this femininity leads to the negative effect of uncontrollability, which is manifested at the first contact with the ailment.

The rumors of a fight between De Bruyne and Vertonghen only confirm the thesis that great advances that have not been confirmed for years have only had a detrimental effect on relations within the team. Old conflicts, misunderstandings, and disagreements quickly escalate among its members when a team is once again unable to win anything. In such an atmosphere, it becomes absolutely impossible to cope with difficulties, especially if the latter was created artificially (once again to the question of choosing the location of the training base in Qatar).

Unfortunately the failure in Qatar drew a thick line below the Belgian team’s “golden belt” results. Combined in a single team, Courtois, Vertonghen, Hazard, De Bruyne and Lukaku limited themselves to bronze at the 2018 World Cup, and then Red Devils fans will have to rely on other players. Perhaps they will be able to surpass the result of their predecessors at the 2026 World Cup in the USA, Mexico and Canada, but this will already be their success, and this “golden generation” of Belgian football in history will be more associated with it. English geniuses like Rio Ferdinand, Frank Lampard, David Beckham, Steven Gerrard, and Wayne Rooney have never won anything substantial when playing for the same team…