Belgium Must Makes Changes or Risk Wasting Their Golden Generation

Under the teeming skies of Lyon, Belgium’s fans showed up, and they showed up in force. The sea of red spread halfway around the stands was the most arresting sight in Parc Olympique Lyonnais on Monday night as Euro 2016 kicked off for the gastronomical capital of France.

After days in which the headlines have been dominated by violence and disorder, Les Diables Rouges charmed the locals in the city centre before coming together in perfect choreography in Decines, on the outskirts. They even applauded "Il Canto degli Italiani," the opposition’s anthem.

If only their team had been as well organised. Belgium have the players to be one of the favourites for the tournament but, it increasingly seems, they do not have the coach to make it count. The game itself was a thriller, but in the battle of the coaches, it was victory by knockout for Antonio Conte against Marc Wilmots. Noted tactical blogger 11 Tegen 11 perhaps put it best, in this tweet:

First, let’s be clear—Italy were excellent. It wasn’t just the celebrated BBC of Andrea Barzagli, Leonardo Bonucci and Giorgio Chiellini who stifled Belgium. Conte’s wing-backs, Andrea Candreva (the man of the match from this seat) and Matteo Darmian, got through plenty of work down their respective flanks—but most importantly covered at the drop of the hat. The instant that Italy lost the ball, their back three became five.

When trouble threatened to brew, Chelsea’s next coach reacted quickly. Conte hooked Darmian after Les Diables Rouges twice made menacing breaks down his side, replacing him with fresh legs in the shape of Mattia De Sciglio. All in all, Italy made light of the sort of personnel challenges that led many commentators to call it the weakest Azzurri squad in at least a generation.

The concerns started in a midfield shorn of Claudio Marchisio and the pivotal Marco Verratti. The trio in situ hardly inspired, but it worked well and defended tirelessly in front of the back three/five. Daniele De Rossi has seen better days, but he fought like a tiger as the match went on. Marco Parolo never stopped running.

It’s hard to take in the fact that the relatively unheralded Emanuele Giaccherini has a branded case to his mobile phone, decked with a caricature of himself under the legend "EG17," a nod to his shirt number with Bologna. Nobody was laughing at the end of the match, after his driven display. He capped his performance with a superbly taken opening goal, after he instantly controlled and smartly dispatched Bonucci’s delicious pass over the compromised Toby Alderweireld.

Another unfancied workhorse, Graziano Pelle, capped it all off at the end from Candreva’s pass. Pelle ended the season in decent enough form for Southampton, but he wouldn’t have been most people’s ideal.

Beside him, Eder had scored one goal in 14 Serie A matches (eight starts) since joining Inter in January, but he worked the Belgian defence hard. It had seemed tough to justify keeping in-form attacking talent like Lorenzo Insigne and the revived Stephan El Shaarawy on the bench in favour of this duo, but they earned their corn.

Let’s not got too swept away by Conte’s tactical mastery, though. Italy’s was, for the most part, a triumph of perspiration (and perception) over inspiration. The players’ joyous celebrations at the end (of just the first group match, remember) showed how much they’d put in, and the feeling of vindication after they were so extensively doubted.

Laurent Cipriani/Associated Press

Yet Belgium’s, and Wilmots’, culpability is inescapable. Alderweireld told this column after the game that they “had some difficulties with the tactics of Italy.” It was as if the way Conte’s team played was a surprise, when it shouldn’t have been.

First off, Wilmots could have done with taking a leaf from Conte’s book, in taking advantage of a successful club defensive partnership in his midst. It’s a simple but effective way of doing things at international level, but whereas Italy used Juve’s defence, Belgium decided to pass on faithfully reprising Tottenham Hotspur’s.

Thomas Vermaelen started in central defence, with Alderweireld’s Spurs partner Jan Vertonghen farmed out to his habitual national-team position of left-back. It is perhaps a leap to blame Alderweireld’s error for the Giaccherini goal on that defensive reshuffle, but it can’t have helped.

Drawn on how he would organise the back line in the pre-match press conference, Wilmots had been coy. “It’s a question that I can’t answer,” he told this column, “and that I don’t want to answer, because I’m not giving out the composition of the team. That they (Alderweireld and Vertonghen) are well respected in England, I can well understand that. I often watch them. But you know they’ve played as right and left full-backs (for us) for the last four years, and have made up part of one of the best defences in Europe. We’ve had to re-adjust a little bit, but you’ll have the response tomorrow.”

And we did. The cloak-and-dagger approach gave way to the same defensive concerns so apparent in the recent friendly win in Switzerland.

Vermaelen is a strange call. Loyalty is one thing, but the former Arsenal defender has started seven La Liga games for Barcelona since joining in the summer of 2014. So perhaps Belgium don’t have full-backs of the equivalent class of their centre-backs, but is Jordan Lukaku not good enough to make the cut? Or if Vermaelen must be included, why can’t he play at full-back (as he often has), leaving the Tottenham duo intact in the centre?

Possibly still more contentious was the inclusion of Marouane Fellaini in midfield, with Wilmots deciding muscle was needed in the centre rather than letting Kevin De Bruyne prompt from there. The first clear chance of the game offered brief backing of this plan, with Gigi Buffon diving smartly to parry when Radja Nainggolan benefitted from the sort of second-ball action that Fellaini is so adept at creating.

Yet this ultimately proved indicative of Belgium’s first-half problems, as they were largely limited to efforts from outside the area. It also arguably underlined that Belgium are playing exactly the sort of football from which their players’ intrinsic quality should steer them away. Fellaini’s inclusion left Kevin De Bruyne isolated and frustrated way out right, and he was ineffective.

Antonio Calanni/Associated Press/Associated Press

The morning-after frustration will be compounded by the knowledge that Italy were far from perfect and had moments of malleability, particularly in the second half. “We came back, and we had chances,” Axel Witsel rightly pointed out after the game—notably when the off-colour Romelu Lukaku skewed wide after a quick break from De Bruyne and Eden Hazard, while substitute Divock Origi missed a pair of free headers.

Hazard became more influential as the game went on, but he did that as he roamed where he liked. The closing stages were a bun fight. Alderweireld, the regular first-choice right-back, was playing as an auxiliary right-winger (with Yannick Carrasco by now at his side) in the closing stages as Belgium threw the kitchen sink at Italy.

Pelle’s second may have been extensively celebrated—half the Italian delegation seemed to end up on the pitch—but was almost anecdotal. The two glorious chances he missed earlier (one first half, once second) could have been far more costly had Belgium taken their chances, and that’s worth remembering.

Witsel had the final word. “Italy were more intelligent, experienced and clinical than us,” the Zenit midfielder said. Opening statements rarely come as blunt and damning as that. If Wilmots is to prove he can lead Belgium towards fulfilling their potential, there needs to be an emphatic response against the Republic of Ireland on Friday.