Too old, too sluggish and too much Lukaku; Belgium deserve their early exit

With an ageing, unhappy team and sluggish performances, Belgium have looked nothing like the number two FIFA-ranked team on the planet at this World Cup.

Increasingly, figuring out which of the European nations will crash and burn in the group stages has become quite a diverting pastime. Four years ago in Russia, it was Germany. Eight years ago in Brazil, it was England and Italy.

This year, the first spot in this particular hall of shame has been claimed by Belgium.

To an extent, it may be slightly unfair to lump Belgium into this category. After all, this is a country with a population of just 11.5m which has never won the World Cup or the European Championship.

But at the same time, in the case of this Belgium team, it feels fair. This is, after all, Belgium’s ‘Golden Generation’, a team only knocked out of their last two major tournaments by the eventual winners and which even this tournament was studded with star players. For much of the last decade Belgium have been The Team Most Likely, but somehow failed to do anything.

With Canada already eliminated with a game to spare, there were three teams going into the final round of group games looking for a place in the next knockout stage, but only one of them had a sense of Crisis about them.

Morocco had caused one of the surprises of the round in beating Belgium in their second match, while Croatia’s win against Canada had been one of the more one-sided of the entire group stages.

But Belgium’s World Cup had been markedly different. Defeat against Morocco had been foreshadowed by a poor game against Canada which they won against the run of the play thanks to a Michy Batshuayi goal, but even this was overshadowed by events off the pitch, with Kevin De Bruyne saying that the team was too old and had ‘no chance’ of winning the World Cup. 

French newspaper L’Equipe reported on a dressing room argument after the Morocco defeat, which resulted in goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois saying, “Who leaked this? If it gets out, it’s his last day in the national team”, while denying the rumours.

At kick-off Croatia and Morocco had four points each while Belgium had three, and such narrow margins count for a lot at this juncture in a World Cup finals.

The only way in which both Croatia and Belgium could both qualify was if Canada surprised Morocco by beating them, but Morocco were two goals up by the midway point in the first half of their game against the team playing for pride, even though…