Red Devils in trouble
©Imago/Content stadium
International football has a habit of moving in and out of eras, where one national team will dominate tournaments for a certain period of time, only to be supplanted by another. Unlike domestic football, where players can move as quickly and as often as they want, national teams tend to stick together and prolong such dominance when they first achieve it. In the modern era we’ve seen great German, Spanish and now French teams do exactly that.
However, one nation that perhaps sums up the rise and fall of a particular crop of players from a specific country more than any other in Europe at this moment in time is none other than Belgium. Once considered strong favourites for World Cups and Euros alike, “the Red Devils” showed how far they have now fallen with a disappointing 1-0 defeat to Slovakia in their opening match of Euro 2024. So how far has Belgium’s “Golden Generation” fallen and is there any hope for the small, European nation to get back to the top?
How good was Belgium’s “Golden Generation?”
Although Belgium have always played a part in international tournaments, a groundswell of exciting young talents first came through around 2014, which saw the nation take a notable step up in their performances at international tournaments. Having failed to qualify for the 2006 and 2010 World Cups, Belgium then reached the quarter-finals in 2014 and claimed third place at the 2018 tournament. Equally, having failed to qualify for three successive European championships, the Red Devils then reached the quarter-finals in back-to-back Euros in 2016 and 2020.
As we can see in the graph below, the national team’s overall squad market value soared from 2014 onwards, with a rather remarkable rise from just €351 million in June 2014, to a record high of €906m in June 2019. Not only had Belgium seen their national team triple in market value, but the small country very quickly came to rival some of the biggest national teams around the world. And as such, expectations rose in line with the team’s market value. Unfortunately, the players in question never quite lived up to the demands placed upon them at an international tournament.
“After reaching the quarter-finals at the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Euros, we reached the semi-finals of the 2018 World Cup to win the third-place play-off against England,” recalls Transfermarkt Area Manager for Belgium, Bart Tamsyn. “We can certainly call that a success. The 2020 Euros was therefore a disappointment, as we only reached the quarter-finals, even though we lost to the eventual champions Italy and eliminated Portugal in the previous round. However, the last chance for the “Golden Generation” came in the 2022 World Cup, which was a disaster where we did not even get out of the group stage. We then played against Croatia with a starting XI that had an average age of 31.3 years. The perception then was that Roberto Martinez had stuck too much to established names who were not in form and had too little consideration for the new generation.”
Indeed, by the time Belgium were stumbling out of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, the national team’s market value had dropped from a record high in 2019 to just €563m. And, as this summer’s tournament will perhaps underline, generational talents like Eden Hazard, Marounane Fellaini, Romelu Lukaku and even Kevin de Bruyne have either departed the international stage or are perhaps not the same players that they once were for their national team.
Do Belgium have a new golden generation?
While the nation may no longer have high hopes of competing at each international tournament, that’s not to say that Belgium national team fans don’t have anything to be excited about in the future. With a squad market value of €584.4m, the Red Devils are still one of the most star-studded teams in this summer’s Euros and in Jérémy Doku (market value: €65m), Amadou Onana (€50m) and Johan Bakayoko (€45m), Belgium can lay claim to three of the top 25 most valuable U-23 players at the tournament. And it is worth noting that while the national team’s market value isn’t what it once was, it has risen from just €373m at the end of 2023 to where it now stands at a reasonable €591m. So could Belgium be on the cusp of a new golden generation?
“Let’s hope so,” noted Tamsyn when asked about the new stars in Belgium’s national team. “Of course, there are a few players who have received a solid boost to their market value this season through either their performances or a transfer. Jérémy Doku, for example, had a market value of €28M at this time last year, where it is now €65M. Similarly, Johan Bakayoko has gone from €10M to €45M in one season, Louis Openda from €35m to €60M. These three alone, for example, account for an increase of almost €100M in one year. The international stage of the European Championship therefore seems a good platform to prove on the one hand that they are worth these values, but on the other that they still have room to make further steps forward.”