Belgium Falls to Italy and Searches for a Silver Lining

Belgium’s players were still, their faces blank, as they heard the clock strike midnight. At the other end of the Allianz Arena in Munich, Italy’s players were being slowly consumed by their fans, released only once they had surrendered their white jerseys and their green training bibs and, in some cases, their muddied shorts for use as future sacraments.

The team they had just beaten by 2-1, though, barely moved. Kevin De Bruyne stared off into the distance. Thomas Vermaelen glared at the grass. The only clue that Roberto Martínez, their coach, had not been replaced by a statue — arms folded, brow furrowed — was the fact that his mouth was moving, furiously chewing gum.

Belgium’s last chance had come, and it had gone. That was how it felt, anyway. It was what the players believed, what Martínez had internalized: that this squad, this generation, “deserved” some sort of manifest reward for of all that it had achieved. That it would come in the form of a trophy, a title, a crown, and that Euro 2020 was the final opportunity to grasp it.

That was the bar that had been set, the challenge that had been accepted, not far off a decade ago, when Belgium was anointed as the home of European soccer’s most recent golden generation. The country had been a backwater since the 1980s, but all of a sudden it had a great blooming of talent.

It boasted Thibaut Courtois, one of the world’s finest goalkeepers; a defense marshaled by Vincent Kompany, Jan Vertonghen and Toby Alderweireld; a midfield patrolled by Axel Witsel and conducted by De Bruyne; and an attack that blended the trickery of Eden Hazard and the cold-eyed ruthlessness of Romelu Lukaku. They were just the most prominent names; behind them was a supporting cast of half a dozen more of Europe’s finest players.

In truth, presenting Belgium with a straight binary — glory or failure, a trophy or disdain — was always a little too simplistic, perhaps a touch brutal. That first team reached a quarterfinal in the 2014 World Cup, then was eliminated by a more experienced Argentina. It traveled to the same stage in the European Championship in 2016, only to fall to an unheralded, surging Wales side.

Two years later, at the World Cup in 2018, Martínez broke that particular ceiling: Belgium outclassed Brazil in the round of eight and fell by the most slender of margins to the eventual winner, France, in the semifinals. A frenetic loss to Italy in Munich on Friday meant a backward step, a bowing out in yet another quarterfinal.

According to the terms of the original agreement, that means that Belgium has failed. But that rather fails to take into account that success can — and should — be relative. For a nation of Belgium’s size, that record is formidable. For a nation of its recent history, it is a striking improvement: Before 2014, it had not qualified for a major tournament in more than a decade. It had not been to a quarterfinal since the 1986 World Cup.

That will be of scant solace to the players, of course, as they contemplate the end of their era. Their talent — their own expectations — warranted more, wherever they came from, whatever previous generations had achieved.

Euro 2016, in particular, will be a source of regret, the best chance the country had to win something. So, too, might the fact that this tournament was delayed by a year. Had Euro 2020 actually been held in 2020, Belgium would have been a year younger, a year fresher. Perhaps that might have made all the difference.

Some of its mainstays, certainly, are running out of time. Vermaelen is 35, Vertonghen 34 and Alderweireld 32. Witsel, Nacer Chadli and Dries Mertens are all in the autumn of their careers, too. Even Hazard — only 30, but plagued by injury for the past two years — may now be on an accelerated descent from his prodigious peak. For some, if not quite all, of them, the next major tournament, in Qatar next winter, is most likely a step too far.

Belgium’s golden generation — this squad that has been through only the most cosmetic of alterations since that first tournament in 2014 — will never make that final leap, will never win anything, not as it was meant to, not together.

And yet there is a misunderstanding here, too, because when the clock strikes midnight, nothing stops. It just means that a new day is starting. Generations do not rise and fall in perfect synchronicity; they fold and meld and blend into each other.

Vermaelen, Vertonghen and Witsel might not make it to the next World Cup, but Youri Tielemans and Yannick Carrasco and Timothy Castagne will. So, too, crucially, will De Bruyne and Lukaku. Belgium will not disappear. The binary — win something now or be condemned to indignity forever — is and always was an illusion. Martínez, if he remains in place, will still be able to take a fearsome side to Qatar.

Nothing illustrates that better than the identity of the player who shone brightest, even in defeat, for Belgium against Italy: not one of the old-stagers, drawing the curtain on Belgium’s illustrious recent past, but a representative of the near future.

It is not hard to be captivated by Jérémy Doku. He is, in the purest sense, a cartoon footballer. He darts past defenders as if they are figments of his imagination. He hops, just a little, before he accelerates, as if he needs to allow the afterburners to catch fire. He feints and shimmies and dances, the ball never leaving his spell.

At one point, as Belgium pressed in vain for an equalizer, Doku danced inside from the left wing, past one Italian, past another. When a third appeared, he went past him, too, because why wouldn’t you, if you could? It was fitting, really, that Giovanni Di Lorenzo — the Italian defender whom Doku had terrorized all evening — was one of those to give up his shorts in the celebrations afterward. It was not the first time, after all, that he had found himself exposed.

Doku, most pertinently, is only 19. For some members of Belgium’s golden generation, this is where the journey ends, frozen in a grief-stricken tableau as another team celebrates in front of them. For Doku, this is just a beginning. His whole career stretches out from here. The clock has struck midnight. That is the thing, though: All that means is that there is a new day ahead.