From our special correspondent in Paderborn,
Nothing predisposed the French team and Belgium to cross swords so early in the tournament, but the unwillingness of both teams to not finish first in their group decided otherwise. In our neighbouring countries, Météo Belgique’s forecasts were counting on a clash in the quarter-finals, and in the right part of the table what’s more, far from Portugal, Germany and Spain.
“At the start, when we saw our group, we thought we would finish first and have a much more affordable 8th place,” admits Christophe Franken, a Belgian journalist for the Last hour who we met at the Blues conference this week. We had planned to meet you in the next round in Munich. And everyone said that Tedesco and the team would have succeeded in their tournament. »
Should we understand from this last sentence that our neighbours have already booked their return ticket for Monday evening, at the final whistle? Unlike the Reims defender Wout Faes, who declared that France did not “scare” him, all the Belgians we interviewed do not have too many illusions about the outcome of the match.
Back home, Alex Teklak, a former Belgian player who became a consultant for various media outlets, serves as a gauge of the general atmosphere on site: “We know the reputation of Didier Deschamps’ French team. It was the team to avoid. That’s why people in the country are complaining and absolutely wanted to finish first. For us, at the start of the competition, the Blues were favourites and that hasn’t really changed since then.”
Belgium knows the song (and Didier Deschamps)
Hearing this, a question nags at us. Several, in fact: Did the broadcasting of the Blues’ matches at the Euro stop at the Belgian border, like the radioactive cloud from Chernobyl stopped dead at ours? Haven’t they seen what this French team is (in)capable of? Finally, are they aware that it still hasn’t scored a goal in the game and that it shared the points against a sad Poland that has already been eliminated?
“We saw them,” Alex Teklak replied. “But we know the reputation of Didier Deschamps’ team and I’m not that worried about them. Obviously it’s not spectacular football but it’s winning football. You have so much talent. We take your team home every day because we’ve been chasing something for years and we’ve never won. We look at you like an outsider looks at a favourite.”
It is true that the argument of the team playing dirty and not making anyone dream no longer hits the mark with people whose memory of the 2018 semi-final (and all the mess that followed) is still very fresh in their minds. Criticizing DD’s science of winning, as ugly as it is? We won’t catch them doing it again.
“In my Facebook feed, almost everyone sees us beaten in the last 16,” says “JF”, a supporter of Standard de Liège and the Red Devils. “Sooner or later we know that the French team will wake up and the fear is that it will be against us… Some even said they would prefer not to get out of the group stage than to be eliminated by France!” It’s funny to see how radically, on one side of the border or the other, the perception of Les Bleus changes.
A clearly less dashing Belgium
But if there is fear, it is also that on the Belgian side the picture has changed quite a bit in six years. If De Bruyne is still there, even less dapper than with City, the same for Lukaku to a lesser extent, the golden generation of Hazard, Courtois, Fellaini, Kompany and company has given up. And today’s did not show much during the group stage, a bit like the Blues, with a final match against Ukraine almost as desperate as France’s against Poland.
“Our defense is less good, we no longer have Hazard, whom the French were wary of… And you still have this reservoir which seems inexhaustible. Yes, this team scares us. Certainly more than in 2018,” breathes “JF”. The only Belgian journalist to have made the trip to the Blues conference on Thursday, Christophe Franken did not go unnoticed. By asking William Saliba if he saw even a Red Devil who would start in the French team, our colleague made the assembly laugh a lot. But his question says a lot about how he feels about his selection.
“I’m not saying that no Belgian would start for you, I think that with De Bruyne and Doku, you would be happy,” he continues. But for the rest, it’s still weak. We talk about a shock but when we compare the two squads, there’s no real comparison. I was looking at that, the 16th or 17th best French defender would start for us, really.” With ten million inhabitants, the reservoir is not the same either. “Yes, it’s pure logic, we are a smaller country, it’s not surprising,” concedes Alex Teklal. For the former Charleroi defender, we should rather see the recent past as a nice anomaly and accept the idea of a return to normal.
“We had a superb generation of Kompany, Vermaelen, Hazard, Fellaini, Vertonghen, and that gave people a lot of hope. They don’t realize that in a country like ours, it’s already huge not to have had a big generational gap since their retirements,” he explains. “Let’s accept the idea that we are in our place, that our team has less talent than in the past.”
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The loud whistles from the Belgian stands after the match against Ukraine on Wednesday show that not everyone is ready to accept this slight downgrade. “It’s a spoiled child’s reaction,” Teklal says. “And it’s very poorly understood by the players, who are well aware that they no longer have quite the same team as before.”
Belgians and French united by suffering
A cruel observation that Belgian comedian Alex Vizorek does not entirely share. “When you have in your team the one I consider to be almost the best player in the world, in the person of Kevin De Bruyne, when you have a guy like Jérémy Doku, and in all positions guys who are not idiots, you have the right to hope for more. I remember a time when we had guys from Cercle Bruges in the team. That’s over.”
The right to hope for better, that is at least one common point uniting our two peoples during this Euro and which will perhaps have the merit of avoiding the insults and low blows from Russia which, in both camps, had ended up transforming this usually good-natured Franco-Belgian rivalry into a settling of scores at OK Corral. “What is funny,” concludes Vizorek, “is that the French are not reassured either by the idea of playing against us. Six years ago we were teasing each other to find out who was the best. This year we are wondering who will be the least bad!”
