Euro 2024 exit spells end for Belgium’s underachieving ‘Golden Generation’
Kevin De Bruyne may have reached the end of the line in international football after his latest disappointment - Clive Mason/Getty Images
Golden generation [ɡəʊl.dən d͡ʒɛnəˈɹeɪʃən] n
A particularly talented group of footballers who should dominate the sport for 10 years but inevitably disappoint instead, often going out of tournaments to the first good team they face.
No Flemish dictionaries to hand, but Belgium’s definition must be the same as ours. This defeat to France is surely the closure of their window, with Vincent Kompany, Eden Hazard and Mousa Dembélé now long gone. Jan Vertonghen, Kevin De Bruyne and Romelu Lukaku are destined to join them. If this is how it ends it was no disgrace, but tragic just the same.
Poor Vertonghen, who after more than 150 caps settled this game with an own goal, likely his last significant act for his country. It was an attempted block on Randal Kolo Muani’s shot, wrongfooting his goalkeeper and erasing all of his impressive nullifying work on France’s attack. Kylian Mbappé appeared to celebrate in his face. Should Vertonghen retire, which he said he would contemplate after this tournament, it will be difficult to find a centre-back of similar reliability.
Players can emerge to take up that mantle, it is harder to find the next De Bruyne. He will be 35 during the 2026 World Cup but he suffers from the modern fixture glut more than most. Does he really fancy a final tilt at glory in North America with a reduced supporting cast? After two more seasons of relentless relentlessness at Manchester City, league, cups, genetically enhanced Champions League and all?
Manager Domenico Tedesco was asked if he would attempt to persuade him to prolong his international career. “He knows how important he is,” he said. “He knows my opinion about him. But immediately after the game it is difficult to answer questions about these things.”
It was not De Bruyne’s best game, it was not even a particularly good one. Yet it was his name chanted by the bouncing hordes of red behind the goal to Seven Nation Army, more songs for him than the country. He had the best chance to win it, the sort of quick shot most Premier League goalkeepers have conceded at some point, the one that is in the net before they have fully realised it is coming towards them. Mike Maignan saved it and Tedesco’s rope-a-dope strategy came undone.
Perhaps best if Lukaku disembarks at this point too, still only 31 but wearing those years more heavily than his compatriots. He seemed to be repelling the ball from his shins, ineffective as a focal point, a target man and a hold-up-lay-off merchant simultaneously. A complete non-forward. A backward. If he was meant to be a fox in the box he was a tired one, the sort you might see trotting home confused down a suburban street in the early dawn.
“We have big trust in Romelu,” said Tedesco, lamenting his luck after group-stage profligacy left him without a goal. “He had a tough tournament. Normally you are the leading scorer after [his group stage]... If you think Romelu would go home with zero goals after these kind of games, for me it’s a pity.”
So what is the final reckoning from Belgium’s decade of on-paper brilliance? World Cup quarter-finalists in 2014, third in 2018, group stage disaster in Qatar. Beaten quarter-finalists in the past two European Championships, leaving this one in the preceding round. They are going backwards and that is surely the time for change.
Some comfort perhaps in England’s experience. The tricky Roy Hodgson years start now, but the next golden generation could be just around the corner.
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