The Red Flames can book their plane tickets to Switzerland. For the third consecutive time they will be at the European Championships this summer, which will take place from 2 to 27 July. However, the shine is missing. After a difficult course, the Flames did not make it a gala match at home in the last jump-off match before the European Championship against Ukraine.
Qualification was almost complete after the 0-2 win in the first leg against Ukraine, but more was expected from the Flames at home. A weak Ukraine actually turned a blind eye in Leuven at times. Janice Cayman, among others, had to stop an attack through the center of Ukraine just in time. However, the Flames could miss a 0-1 deficit like a toothache. It could have given the already exhausted Ukrainians courage and made the match unnecessarily exciting.
Miss Eurlings
Something that was not the intention at home, but the Flames neglected to complete it completely themselves for a long time. After more than twenty minutes, Hannah Eurlings incomprehensibly missed the 1-0 on the other side. She aimed a giant opportunity at the Ukrainian goalkeeper from half a meter. Tessa Wullaert forced it a little later with a tight cross, which the Ukrainians tackled into their own goal, but the goal was disallowed due to offside by Eurlings, who was breathing down the neck of the defense. The OH Leuven attacker did not have her purest evening and also suffered avoidable loss of ball several times.
© David Catry / Sportpix
Wullaert showed her class for the umpteenth time – no name can be read more often in a positive sense in a Red Flames match report than hers. With a back heel she put Toloba on its way to 1-0 in the second half. That European Championship ticket was finally received, which of course remains the most important thing for the Red Flames. And yet.
1-0 against a mediocre opponent was not a result to write home about and the score even ended at 1-1. The Flames let Ukraine take the lead and conceded another goal. Wullaert made it 2-1 at the end, but it was never really convincing from our compatriots. If this European Championship qualifying campaign has made one thing clear, it is that there is quite a lot of work to be done by national coach Ives Serneels and co.
Disappointing campaign
The Flames’ initial goal was to secure a direct ticket through the top two in their qualifying group. That was actually not possible at any time in a group that also included world champion Spain, Denmark and the Czech Republic, meaning the Flames even had to fight for third place. That worked, but the Flames had to overcome some additional hurdles through jump-off matches to still get to the European Championship. In the previous jump-off round it was not great against Greece, which was weaker on paper. The Flames eventually finished it 5-0 at home, after it had surprisingly remained 0-0 against the Greeks on the road. The Flames did not perform well against Ukraine either.
© David Catry / Sportpix
In this way, our compatriots will – in all honesty – find it difficult to match their performance in Switzerland at the previous European Championship. In 2022, the Flames unexpectedly reached the quarterfinals. The key then was weeks of preparation in which our national team was mainly pushed to a higher level physically. Already a month and a half before the start of the tournament, the Flames were sent individual programs that they had to follow closely.
This way they were able to put their foot next to that of the other mid-engines in England and maintain their level of play for an entire match. However, something like this takes time, commitment and money. It will be important for the football association – where they have been saying for years that top eight in Europe is the target for the Flames – to devise such an extensive preparation again and get everyone on board with that story. Serneels still has a good six months to get everything perfect, just like then. Then this qualifying campaign can quickly be forgotten.
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