Euro 24, Group E; After the gold rush
Belgium's golden generation is almost at its end, but that doesn't mean that they don't have a strong team this time around.
Belgium’s somewhat ignominious exit from the last World Cup marked the end of an era. The golden generation was over, and their run had ended with early elimination from the competition amid some pretty clear rancour between some of the players. Yet again, a group who’d come through had failed to build a team that was at least sum of their parts. Having been eliminated after having lost to Morocco and failing to break down Croatia, the pretty much universal reaction was, ‘well, I guess that’s the end of that, then’.
Eden Hazard, Axel Witsel and Toby Alderweireld all retired after that tournament, but a couple of the players still associated with that period remain. The second highest-scoring European international footballer of all time, Romelu Lukaku, is still there. Kevin De Bruyne, once a baby faced assassin but now well into his thirties but still capable of opening up just about any defence, is still there. Jan Vertongen, now 37 years old and still plying his trade with Anderlecht after more than 150 appearances for his country, is still there.
The biggest change of all that came after the 2022 debacle was the replacement of head coach Roberto Martinez after six years in charge of the team. His replacement Domenico Tedesco is the second youngest coach in the tournament after Julian Nagelsmann at 38 years of age and has a relatively brief coaching CV to his name, but he took his first club Schalke 04 to the runners-up position in the Bundesliga behind Bayern Munich in 2018 (astute observers who’ve witnessed what’s happened to Schalke since then will already be aware of what an achievement that was) and RB Leipzig to the DFB-Pokal in 2022.
But he’s also had quite a big falling out with quite a senior member of the squad. Goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois will not be making the trip to Germany for the finals after a row with the coach over the captaincy of the team when he’d previously been widely expected to announce his international retirement after the tournament.
This leaves a bit of a gap in the goalkeeping position, with three back-ups who don’t inspire a great deal of confidence. Koen Casteels only has ten caps and is leaving Wolfsburg for a late career pension top-up in Saudi Arabia. Tomas Kaminski had a full season in the Premier League with Luton Town and performed admirably, but only made his international debut in the March friendlies. Mats Sels performed well for Nottingham Forest after landing there at the start of February, but has only made eight appearances for Belgium.
But otherwise, Belgium should outperform their 2022 debacle, at least. With the ball at his feet, Jeremy Doku remains one of Europe’s fastest footballers. Leandro Trossard ended last season within a whisker of winning a Premier League title with Arsenal. Johan Bakayoko has earned such rave reviews at PSV Eindhoven that he courted the interest of PSG and might well find himself making a step up to a higher level before the end of the summer transfer window. This remains a strong team, and they should comfortably out-perform their performance of a year and a half ago.
It’s been eight years since Romania last appeared in the finals of a major tournament. By the end of the 1990s the team that had lit up the 1994 World Cup finals was half-forgotten, and the 21st century hasn’t been as kind to the team as the previous one was. They now haven’t qualified for the World Cup finals since 1998, with only early eliminations in the group stages in 2008 and 2016 to show for the near-quarter century since they (hilariously) knocked England out of Euro 2000.
If there is a great hope among their current squad, it’s probably Radu Dragusin of Tottenham Hotspur, who arrived in London from Genoa and whose €25m transfer fee made him the most expensive Romanian player of all time. Dragusin ended up impressing in his nine games for Spurs and is the central cog in his national team’s defensive unit. At the other end of the scale is Nicolae Stanciu, the most experienced member of the squad, who’s spent the last couple of years in China and Saudi Arabia but who remains a key midfielder and the team captain, with 70 caps to his name.
While their qualifying group—Israel, Switzerland, Belarus, Kosovo and Andorra—may have been fairly modest, they did get through it with ease, going unbeaten in their ten matches with six wins and four draws and winning their group by five points. Arguably the defining moment of their qualifying campaign came when they played Switzerland in Lucerne last June. Switzerland were cruising to what had been looking to be a comfortable win with a 2-0 lead, but two goals in the 89th and 90th minutes from Valentin Mihăilă sealed an unlikely draw. Qualification was sealed with a 2-1 win in Israel in November.
There’s little to suggest that Romania will set this tournament alight, but having only qualified for the finals of a World Cup or a Euros a couple of times in the last couple of decades, their very appearance in these finals may be considered an upswing in form in itself. And with there being no other stand-out teams in this group beyond Belgium, qualification for the second round may even be a realistic aim.
The same could be said for Slovakia, who are making their third successive appearance in the finals of the European Championships. In 2016 they got through the group stages as one of the best-ranked third-placed teams after picking up a goalless draw against England in their final match before getting brushed aside by Germany in the second round. In 2021 they finished third in their group again, but this time a 5-0 reversal against Spain in their final match ensured that they were not one of the third-placed teams through to the next stage of the competition.
Qualification for these finals was straightforward. They ran up 22 points out of a possible thirty in their group, finishing second to Portugal, who were the only team to beat them (and did so twice, completing a 100% record themselves in the process), and finishing five points above third-placed Luxembourg.
Goalscoring looks as though it has the potential to be an issue for them. They may have qualified with ease, but they only scored 17 goals in their ten group matches; less than half Portugal’s 36. In their opening match, Luxembourg held them to a goalless draw in Bratislava. They could only beat Liechtenstein 1-0 away. When they beat them 3-0 in the return match, all three goals came in the first six minutes.
When they finally did get their shooting boots on, the benefits couldn’t have been clearer; a 4-2 win against Iceland was enough to see them through, but if they do have issues with scoring goals in a modest group containing Iceland, Luxembourg, Bosnia and Liechtenstein, will they be able to get much further than out of the group stages in this competition? Still, at least they’ve still got Marin Dubravka, and he’s always good value for money. The defence looks pretty tight, and there’s plenty of experience in midfield.
But that goalscoring issue looks severe; Juraj Kucka and Ondrej Duda are the top goalscorers in their squad on 14 and 13 respectively, but they’ve taken 179 games between them to get those 27 goals. Patrik Hrošovský has played 55 times for them without having scored once, while none of their eight attacking players are in double figures. Napoli’s Stanislav Lobotka is probably their highest profile player, but he’s only scored 4 in 55.
With Ukraine at the moment, of course, everything lands different. It’s impossible to think of this team without the shadow of the invasion that took place a little over two years ago. If the European Championships can offer anything to this continent, it is to be hoped that it offers a degree of respite from the horrors being carried out upon their country.
From a footballing perspective, Ukraine have much to be optimistic about. They may end up with the youngest starting eleven in the tournament. There are big name employers there. Andriy Lunin played last season for Real Madrid as the back-up to Thibaut Courtois. Oleksander Zinchenko was part of Arsenal’s 89-point Premier League season. Mykailo Mudryk remains mostly potential but has been a semi-regular in Chelsea’s team this season. Vitaliy Mykolenko was part of Sean Dyche’s parsimonious Everton defence, which conceded the fourth fewest goals in the Premier League last season. They have a lot of very good players.
Placed in a qualification group which contained both England and Italy, the play-offs were always the most realistic route to these finals. They ended up in third place, and only missed out on automatic qualification on goal difference from Italy after their final match ended in a goalless draw. When we pause to consider that Ukraine didn’t have a single home game in that entire group, to get as far as taking the holders of the competition that far is an achievement enough in itself. They fell behind in both their play-off semi-final and final, but came back to win both matches, against Bosnia and Iceland. A goalless draw in a friendly in Germany last week demonstrated their defensive chops.
With all that’s going on at home, Ukraine are more used than anybody else to playing away from home. But this doesn’t mean that expectations aren’t high. Coming from behind to win in play-off matches can be interpreted as tenacity or flakiness. Youth can be exuberant or naive. But Ukraine have an excellent group of young players, and with Romania and Slovakia to come first, they may end up playing their final group match against Belgium having already taken giant steps towards qualification.