Jan Vertonghen does not think that the players of Belgium were too old to play a good tournament in Qatar. The defender of Anderlecht, who played with the Red Devils did not get past Croatia (0-0) and therefore did not survive the group stage at the World Cup, says that the game against the vice-world champion was good and that the Belgians have failed before.
After a narrow 1-0 win against Canada and a defeat against Morocco (0-2), Belgium needed a win against Croatia to advance to the last sixteen at the World Cup. It didn’t get that far. Partly due to a number of painful misses by substitute Romelu Lukaku, it remained 0-0 and our southern neighbors finish in third place in the group. “That hurts,” Vertonghen told the NOS. “Especially after a game like this. You feel like you don’t deserve to go out, but we didn’t leave it here either.”
That there would be animosity within the group of players is contested by Vertonghen. The former Ajax player states that those stories are greatly exaggerated. “It was chaos, but more on the outside than inside. It was really not too bad on the inside. I’ve been through worse, it really wasn’t that bad that we couldn’t go through a door together or couldn’t stand on a field together. That we showed today.”
Joep Schreuder then states that there has often been talk of Belgium’s ‘too old’ players. The 35-year-old defender does not like that. “It is an easy excuse if things are not going well, but we have shown that it is not due to being old. You have to judge facts. The age of the players is nice on a piece of paper, but we have not noticed much of that. ” In any case, the Belgian federation will evaluate without national coach Roberto Martínez to find out what caused the elimination. The Spaniard announced at the press conference that he would step down as national coach of Belgium.
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