Euro 2020: Belgium find diamonds in the dirt

It could’ve been because he used the word “unfair” to describe the exit of defending champions Portugal from Euro 2020 that coach Fernando Santos immediately felt the urge to back up his remark. What he ended up doing instead was to summarise the idiosyncrasies of not just Sunday night’s match in Seville, but of the game itself at the international majors.

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“They (Belgium) had six shots, one on target. We had 29 and couldn’t even score from one,” said Santos, understandably wearing the “unfairness” of it all on his façade. “They scored, we didn’t—the ball hit the post. My players tried their best but the ball wouldn’t go in, that’s football.” Santos’s best player, Cristiano Ronaldo, was perhaps even more elegant in his summation immediately after the final whistle when he pulled Thibaut Courtois, Belgium goalie and former Real Madrid mate, into a hug and was captured saying: “You got lucky, eh? The ball just wouldn’t get in today.”

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If Ronaldo says it didn’t, it most certainly didn’t. Not when Renato Sanches released Diogo Jota into the Belgian box as early as the 5th minute, only for the Liverpool midfielder to scythe the golden opportunity wide. And certainly not in the 25th minute when Ronaldo himself towered over the stationary ball and got his free-kick to swoop around the Belgian bodies forming a wall along the D but not around Courtois’s gloves.

This set the tone for Portugal’s lack of luck, as Ronaldo put it, late in the second half when a real flurry of chances went abegging. Jota messed another chance from the box, this time hoofing it impossibly over the crossbar; a close-range Ruben Dias header was volleyball-punched to safety; Andre Silva even managed to get the ball behind Courtois but not behind the goal-line; and, finally, Raphael Guerreiro smacked the post before Santos smacked his own forehead.

The truth, however, is that every chance squandered by Portugal was but a mini-battle won by Belgium, who finally proved at La Cartuja that they too could get comfortable with grime under their fingernails. For far too long this golden generation of Belgium has looked its proverbial million dollars at the majors until almost always losing when confronted by a team playing dirty, gritty football. On Sunday, the best ranked national football team in the world, one with no trophies to show for their ranking, proved that they too could get dirty; that they too could rope-a-dope.

Sure, in the recent past Belgium did manage a surreal turnaround against Japan at the World Cup in 2018—also at the Round of 16 stage—when Roberto Martinez’s boys found themselves 2-0 down with just over 20 minutes to go and yet scored the winner in the 94th minute. But sometimes holding on to a slender lead can prove to be tougher and nervier than an all-out counterattack, mainly because the Belgium trailing Japan had nothing to lose and everything to gain; unlike the Belgium of Sunday night, who had a goal and a reputation to protect.

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As phenomenal as Thorgan Hazard’s goal was (it was struck with the outside of the younger Hazard’s right boot, giving the ball enough swerve and rip to narrowly fizz past a diving Rui Patricio in Portugal’s goal) it was well against the rhythm and flow of the night, which was otherwise all about rues and regrets. So much so that at one point Romelu Lukaku held his head in utter disbelief, because substitute Yannick Carrasco went for goal through a thicket of legs instead of passing to him standing unmarked on the edge of the box. And at another, Lukaku glared and frothed at Dries Mertens—who had recently come on for Kevin de Bruyne.

Belgium’s No.7 had limped out at the beginning of the second half and by the end, so did Eden Hazard (will he soon come to be known as Thorgan’s brother?). With two of their greatest players out injured (there is no clarity over their immediate future in the tournament), Belgium still resisted. This, then, was their other great gain of the night: eking out a messy, flairless win without much help from the greats. But that’s the thing with getting used to the dirt—sometimes you find diamonds. This is Belgium, after all.

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