Belgium’s manager and his trophless group of players leave a diminished legacy after elimination from the World CupRoberto Martínez embraced each and every one of his backroom staff, then did the same to every player before going over to applaud a small cluster of Belgium fans whose boos could be heard above the din of the stadium PA.His six-year reign as head coach is over and so, despite his protestations to the contrary, are the World Cup dreams of a golden generation. They leave behind a diminished legacy. Continue reading...
If Les Bleus perform in the Nations League final, Deschamps can claim to be the man to lead them into a glorious new phaseBefore his country’s thrilling win over Belgium on Thursday, Hugo Lloris said he could sense something special in the air around the France camp. That smelt like ordure by half-time in the Nations League semi-final, when Belgium were 2-0 up and Les Bleus, if not quite stinking out Turin, looked off-colour.But by the time Theo Hernández arrowed in a fabulous last-minute goal in a 3-2 victory, it was fair to wonder whether we had witnessed not just an extraordinary turnaround, but a more substantial transformation of France. Are the world champions at last going to fulfil their...
While they are on a long unbeaten run, Italian win over Belgium was their first major tournament win against a ‘big’ teamIf we needed one moment to sum up Italy’s transformation over the past four years, it arrived in the 44th minute at the Allianz Arena. Lorenzo Insigne’s goal was a thing of beauty, cutting in from the left and curling the ball from the edge of the area into the far corner of the net with such precision that Thibaut Courtois had no chance.The forward had started his run from the halfway line. This was Insigne distilled, a goal that he has scored countless times down the years. The finish might not always be so flawless, but the ambitious...
He may have lost a battle of fine margins with Romelu Lukaku in Seville, but at 36 Ronaldo has shown in this tournament he is still an asset to Portugal and beyondThree minutes before half-time, Romelu Lukaku turned in the centre-circle and made another arcing run. He had been making them all half, and would go on making them, but had touched the ball only nine times, less than half as many as any other outfielder. This time, though, the ball arrived, via Thorgan Hazard’s clip over the top, and he was able to hold off Rúben Dias and gather. For pretty much the first time in the game, Belgium had the ball in a dangerous area and Portugal were...
For all their excellence, the legacy of the ageing world No 1 team boils down to the next two weeks, starting against PortugalThere is a moment towards the end of the recent BBC documentary Whistle to Whistle in which, after an hour of fixating on the details and minutiae of his job as Belgium coach, Roberto Martínez finally allows himself to take a broader view. “I just feel that this generation deserves silverware,” he says. “They deserve something that will be talked about for the next 50, 60, 70 years. But that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen.”In those few sentences, Martínez expresses the fundamental paradox of his job, in many ways the fundamental paradox of international football. Since taking...