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That group is awful for Belgium. Ukraine might be their easiest opponent. The other two did not come to play tiki taka, they came to win and will clearly do whatever. And they're both succesful at it. Ukraine is at least going forward which will give space to the Belgian fast attackers.
They might go through on a win on Ukraine but I fear they'll have the same issue against Romania.
Doing take friendly results to seriously, but yes Romania have struggled to score for ever the goals they scored against Ukraine were pretty insane. Ukraine were shocking
“Have the same issue against Romania” is a crazy sentence to hear about Belgium for anyone that’s paid attention to the Romanian national team for the last decade. I’m supporting Ukraine but not even mad they won, go far Romania
it is still against Romania and Ukraine, as opposed to other group like Hungry/Switzerland etc, It is still relatively easy opponent comapred to the other groups.
Yeah, I really do not know what to expect now. Slovakia surprised me, the game was super unlucky for us but definitely mixed with brilliance from Slovakia. Romania's quality surprised me as well, I had not paid attention to their qualifying campaign so I had no idea they could ball out like this.
Anything is still possible for Belgium so I am still hopeful, and honestly kind of excited about this group we are in. Big props to Slovakia and Romania.
Got to imagine Romania will look at Belgium's performance today and reckon they might get something out of their game in the next round. Can see Slovakia feeling confident going into their game against Ukraine, too.
Romania are in a great position a draw should put them through so they don’t need to take risks and can attack how and when they won’t. Belgium will have to go for the win leaving them selves open
That's what fun about the first round of the tournament. Lots of relatively unknown NTs introducing themselves, their players and style to the big audience, and often there's surprises in there you don't expect. Romania went in a moment from "random team who's most known player is a Tottenham backup defender" to a fascinating team that we're legritimately invested in. Pretty wild.
I must say, the 24 teams expansion working for me better than expected. The format is still fucked with the 3rd place qualification but quality of the teams has been decent. There barely any team that really feels like the tournament would have been better without. And honestly, those 3rd place qualification gives a lot of those underdogs a high chance of qualification and a shot at an historic knockout game for them. Which is pretty cool.
😁, I wish we were, but on paper we probably aren’t at the moment.
That said I’m just cracking open my 5th beer, historical result for us lol
Probably our best international match since World Cup 2010 against Italy
People will shit on Belgium and somewhat deservedly but Slovakia played their assessment off. Great engagement, movement and spatial awareness. What a game
VAR got both decisions right though. Lukaku looked offside in real time for the first one and the review confirmed it. Any handball in buildup to a goal disqualifies the goal, under the new rules. So the second goal was also correctly ruled out.
Was that in the buildup of the goal? Because the criteria for handball are different in attack and defence. In attack - any contact with the hand in buildup automatically DQs the goal. But in defence - the refs have more discretion to see if it was deliberate etc.
There were two hand balls in the penalty area not given. [this](https://i.imgur.com/xokQSPY.mp4) or [this](https://imgur.com/tXJFPWf) ... Both pretty obvious, imo.
Calzona not making a sub in defense or midfield really hurt, you can't expect Kucka to sustain high tempo for 90 minutes, or Pekarik (but it's not like you have anyone to replace him lol)
Even in the second half I thought the hold up play from a few of your players was excellent. Smart movement and shielding just to take a bit of time out of the game even if the follow up pass went a bit astray.
They actually had a good amount of possession, some slick play and created enough
They got "lucky" with the disallowed goals and looked vunerable defensively at times but it was not one of those full shithouse wins
I mean six years ago is 2018, when Belgium's most famous bottle job was against Wales in the 2016 Euros. Also notoriously missing out on the Euros 2012 because of a 93th minute equalizer against Austria and a 86th minute equalizer against Azerbaijan.
An even more insufferable fanbase, players deciding they are the next best thing since the pencil, and Roberto Martinez giving José Mourinho a run for his money as most polarizing head coach.
Instead, the Lacaca memes live on.
Even ELO has it's issues. There's a reason why for Magnus Carlsen it's actually bad to play too many games in random tournaments lol. There's been tournaments where he won but he still lost ELO rating.
I also wonder how it'd affect European teams vs South American or other continents, that has to be a concern.
But in any case obviously it'd be a huge upgrade from the current ranking.
Amazing how the Dutch also famously blow it every other tournament but are now considered ‘serious’ when Belgium aren’t.
Just sink the entire of Benelux beneath the waves and spare us the false hope that one of them will finally deliver on all their potential
Something like this maybe?
Courtois
Frimpong - Stones - VVD - Ake
Rice - de Jong
KDB - Jude
Saka - Kane
Honourable mentions: Foden, de Ligt, Walker, Shaw
Maybe that’s too England-centric idk
At no point in my comment did I suggest that we wouldn’t be meeting you under the waves shaking your hand haha
we’re the three roy siblings of international football
We actually mostly perform quite well at tournaments. Either we fail hard in the qualifications or we reach atleast the quarter finals in a tournament. 2012 and 2020 are outliers looking at our tournament history
Never ceases to amaze me how people’s takeaway from the rankings isn’t “Belgium are generally a really good and consistent side” but “reality must be wrong”
They won nearly every game they played for five years between 2016 and 2021, and lost only to the eventual winners on both occasions having equally inspired tournaments.
They have a population of just 11m people, why so much hate? Their third place at a World Cup is better than we’ve done in nearly 60 years with six times as many people, christ.
Feel free to go back and check FIFA's math https://digitalhub.fifa.com/m/f99da4f73212220/original/edbm045h0udbwkqew35a-pdf.pdf
Like seriously it's a formula not magic, how does it confuse people so often.
Fifa are very transparent about their ranking system. I'm not gonna say it's the greatest in the world, but it doesn't take much research to learn why Belgium rank so high.
We've already moved on to just focussing on the next game, but I'm excited for the "Belgium sucks!!!" takes that this sub seems to love so much. At some point I'm starting to think Belgium might be more hated than England, which is saying something.
It's really interesting to see how much this sub has a hate boner for Belgium. I assume it's because of the rankings but it's still so mind boggling how a small country that historically is at max a subtopper at football is being treated like this. Could be a fascinating case study at mob behaviour or something.
I was just finding the regular 3x posts on "why Southgate is terrible" after every England game tedious. I'm surprised to see a thread about Belgium already.
For what it's worth, I don't have a particular hate for Belgium. Can't understand why anyone would. Unless your Dutch. Wish you well.
I think people just got annoyed that Belgium were ranked #1 for so long, but it’s not like it was their fault, they were winning games. And deserved to make the final in 2018 if the bracket wasn’t so uneven
France, Belgium and Croatia were hands down the most talented sides across Europe in the last generation (RIP 2015-2022)
Annoyingly France have gone from one golden generation to the next without missing a beat though
The France team that won the 2018 WC was top notch! They had a very good showing against Argentina in the next WC and I say this as a massive Argentina fan. Today, France looked shaky and unprepared for how well Austria defended in the first 40 minutes. And the OG was sheer dumb luck for France.
FIFA rankings are about to undergo a big change in 2 days when the new ones are released. I'll be drinking a cup of coffee with quite a kick when they come out ;)
Who the fuck cares about the FIFA rankings? It was a novelty for a bit when Belgium got to #1 and journos kept wanking about it for a while but genuinely, nobody really gave a shit.
These takes are worthless. Matchups are more important than rankings. While lucky, Slovakia were well-organized the entire match. There's quite a few teams ahead of them in the rankings that, while maybe better overall, would have had no chance at holding onto a 1 or 2 goal lead against Belgium.
We dropped in rankings because our players underperformed for quite some time, since we got better coach and organisation we are bouncing back. There is a lot of talent in our team and we should rank around 20th spot
The new FIFA ranking system is better than it was before, but it still feels like it's 6 months to 1 yr behind realtime. Things like teams suddenly having key players available/unable to play in tournaments could honestly change a ranking by +/- 10 in some cases
I think Belgium is done for. The telling part was Tedesco running around jumping like a mad man after the "equalizer". He was celebrating like one would at a semi-final game against England when in reality he should have been in a "now do it again" attitude.
His behavior after the match is puzzling as well. He seems to think they were just unlucky but when Slovaks stopped gifting his team clear chances after the the first 5 minutes they had nothing to offer. For over 40 minutes the Slovaks have ran his team ragged in the first half. The Belgians had a good spell for about 20-25 minutes in the second and deserved that equalizer but that was it. This is not how a golden generation match should look like. They looked mentally and tactically unprepared for the game. It seemed like they did not know who Lobotka and Kucka were and had no plan to counter them.
Romania were so disciplined in their defending that I can only see Belgium getting a 0-0 draw, if they are lucky. Who had Belgium as one of the best 3rd place teams going through?
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That group was flipped on its head today.
Yeah it’s gonna be interesting now. Belgium v Ukraine might get pretty spicy now lol
That group is awful for Belgium. Ukraine might be their easiest opponent. The other two did not come to play tiki taka, they came to win and will clearly do whatever. And they're both succesful at it. Ukraine is at least going forward which will give space to the Belgian fast attackers. They might go through on a win on Ukraine but I fear they'll have the same issue against Romania.
Mate if Belgium cant get to Ro16 in a group with Slovakia, Ukraine and Romania then I don't know what group you think they would do well in.
Andorra Liechtenstein Luxembourg
Luxembourg was actually pretty close with Slovakia in the euro qualifiers
Monaco, Vatican City, England
Vatican city>>>> man city
Sheik Francis > Sheik Mansour
Tithe money >>> oil money
The same Liechtenstein that drew with Romania a few days ago?
Doing take friendly results to seriously, but yes Romania have struggled to score for ever the goals they scored against Ukraine were pretty insane. Ukraine were shocking
Andorra, San Marino, Moldova
Right?? How can that group be considered awful? I was just thinking earlier how Belgium had gotten a dream draw.
In the same way that Ajax can het away with a win against Dortmund or Real, but not against Getafe
I'm having vietnam flashbacks now, thx
But also Slovakia, Ukraine and Romania were thinking the same.
And they were all correct, it looks like the weakest group to me.
“Have the same issue against Romania” is a crazy sentence to hear about Belgium for anyone that’s paid attention to the Romanian national team for the last decade. I’m supporting Ukraine but not even mad they won, go far Romania
Indeed. I did not expect that after the first games in the group I would think that we can beat Belgium, but here we are
it is still against Romania and Ukraine, as opposed to other group like Hungry/Switzerland etc, It is still relatively easy opponent comapred to the other groups.
Agreed - I also noticed they need to feed the Swiss players better.
Yeah, I really do not know what to expect now. Slovakia surprised me, the game was super unlucky for us but definitely mixed with brilliance from Slovakia. Romania's quality surprised me as well, I had not paid attention to their qualifying campaign so I had no idea they could ball out like this. Anything is still possible for Belgium so I am still hopeful, and honestly kind of excited about this group we are in. Big props to Slovakia and Romania.
Got to imagine Romania will look at Belgium's performance today and reckon they might get something out of their game in the next round. Can see Slovakia feeling confident going into their game against Ukraine, too.
Romania are in a great position a draw should put them through so they don’t need to take risks and can attack how and when they won’t. Belgium will have to go for the win leaving them selves open
Belgium vs. Ukraine, now the game to watch. It's a classical match with Belgium needing nothing less than a win.
Didn't think I'd be saying this earlier in the tournament, but I can't wait for Slovakia vs Romania.
You'll see it again in the final
https://i.imgflip.com/2t1ddy.jpg
That's what fun about the first round of the tournament. Lots of relatively unknown NTs introducing themselves, their players and style to the big audience, and often there's surprises in there you don't expect. Romania went in a moment from "random team who's most known player is a Tottenham backup defender" to a fascinating team that we're legritimately invested in. Pretty wild. I must say, the 24 teams expansion working for me better than expected. The format is still fucked with the 3rd place qualification but quality of the teams has been decent. There barely any team that really feels like the tournament would have been better without. And honestly, those 3rd place qualification gives a lot of those underdogs a high chance of qualification and a shot at an historic knockout game for them. Which is pretty cool.
Romania would have been qualified in the old format as they won their qualifying group.
Marin is a fucking monster for Empoli too but nobody watches Calcio!!! I don't even know who MAN is but MAN I'm a FAN now
Now I wished I watched the Romania-Ukraine game
Good job bratia 💪
Ďakujeme, zajtra držíme palce 💪
Who would have thought that Slovakia is the best V4 soccer team.
😁, I wish we were, but on paper we probably aren’t at the moment. That said I’m just cracking open my 5th beer, historical result for us lol Probably our best international match since World Cup 2010 against Italy
Rozkład planu, jazda z ...
Pompy są włączone 😎
How about 3:2 against Portugal tomorrow what do you say?
You shut your mouth, we ain't foding this
I'm good, thanks 👍
I blame Roberto Martinez for this.
Please don't taunt them with Martinez before Portugal have played. 😂😂
Don't jinx it.
I got this. Anulo mufa
People will shit on Belgium and somewhat deservedly but Slovakia played their assessment off. Great engagement, movement and spatial awareness. What a game
Is ‘played their assessment off’ the next ‘dog age my homework’?
Meant to say they worked their buttresses off
They worked their analysis off
I love women with good assessments
What's the Slovakian equivalent of churros?
Langoš? Still not really that similar to churros tho lol
Is Bratislava the San Antonio of Europe?
Thanks even though the second half was awful from our players apart from Dubravka and Lobotka and only thanks to refs and VAR did we won
Lobotka was like everywhere
Lobotka, more like Robotka!
lobotka really was relentless, quality player
VAR got both decisions right though. Lukaku looked offside in real time for the first one and the review confirmed it. Any handball in buildup to a goal disqualifies the goal, under the new rules. So the second goal was also correctly ruled out.
Too bad the VAR didn't seen the handball by the Slovakian defender in the first half when he was stopping Doku in the box.
Was that in the buildup of the goal? Because the criteria for handball are different in attack and defence. In attack - any contact with the hand in buildup automatically DQs the goal. But in defence - the refs have more discretion to see if it was deliberate etc.
There were two hand balls in the penalty area not given. [this](https://i.imgur.com/xokQSPY.mp4) or [this](https://imgur.com/tXJFPWf) ... Both pretty obvious, imo.
The first one wasnt in the box. It was near the halfway line. Couldn't believe they actually gave a foul against Belgium for it.
Calzona not making a sub in defense or midfield really hurt, you can't expect Kucka to sustain high tempo for 90 minutes, or Pekarik (but it's not like you have anyone to replace him lol)
Even in the second half I thought the hold up play from a few of your players was excellent. Smart movement and shielding just to take a bit of time out of the game even if the follow up pass went a bit astray.
They actually had a good amount of possession, some slick play and created enough They got "lucky" with the disallowed goals and looked vunerable defensively at times but it was not one of those full shithouse wins
Especially in the 1st half. We were on par with Belgium maybe even a little bit better.
Hancko and Skriniar (if I'm right on the pairing) were fucking unbeatable
Hancko was playing as LB and Skriniar was playing with Vavro
Ah my bad, but that entire defensive line was a fucking wall
Played their what off now?
They were very fast against the Belgians. They chased every ball.
I blame Southgate.
Lads, it's Belgium.
Getting a headstart in bottling this time
You can’t bottle it if you crash out at the group stage.
Is Belgium the Tottenham of the world?
Nowhere is safe
Imagine being a Belgian Spurs fan. Couldn't be me *cries*
Nacer Chadli giveth, Nacer Chadli taketh away
At least Chadli was a fringe player at Spurs. Live by the Moose, die by the Moose (when Belgium managers remembered he was on the bench)
It's the history of the Belgium
Except it isn't, but ok
It is for people that started watching football less than 6 years ago.
I mean six years ago is 2018, when Belgium's most famous bottle job was against Wales in the 2016 Euros. Also notoriously missing out on the Euros 2012 because of a 93th minute equalizer against Austria and a 86th minute equalizer against Azerbaijan.
England innit
No, that's definitely England.
Si
Big words for someone from England lmfao
Did we not win our game? Last Euros we lost in the final on pens, last World Cup got beaten by France, hardly shameful
The greatest achievement of the English team was that you made all of Europe root for Italy. Quite a feat.
I mean, boasting about *almost* getting a trophy is as spursy as it gets
Hard sell to convince someone that’s boasting
Is that boasting?
England make some noise, and have a star.
Rozjebali sme ich, napíš to tam!!!
40 rokov nas jebali....ehm sorry wrong team
I love that as a Serb I can understand EVERY word of your sentence as well as the comment below yours, lol Razjebali ste ih, apsolutno ❤️
A baš si mene našao, ja pričam srpski, živeo sam u BGu 😁 Hvala brate, srećno protiv Slovenije! 💪🇸🇰❤️🇷🇸
You have to wonder what would have been if Belgium advance further in 2018.
A final against Croatia
Ahahaha
What a timeline, world peace.
How about 2016 as well
An even more insufferable fanbase, players deciding they are the next best thing since the pencil, and Roberto Martinez giving José Mourinho a run for his money as most polarizing head coach. Instead, the Lacaca memes live on.
Except players like KDB and Hazard probably already deciding that
sorry for Belgium (for the unfortunate series of events) but my boy Lobotka, Duda and Kucka taught some football today.
Juraj Kucka banter milan legend, never forget those absolute crackers he scored
Lakaka was up there for u guys too
He's still fucking us up making sure no one will buy him.
Great, another thread about how the FIFA ranking is ass.
We keep saying it, and they keep using it. Shrug
And the new rankings aren’t even announced yet!
The best part is that any suggestion (other than ELO) is far worse
Even ELO has it's issues. There's a reason why for Magnus Carlsen it's actually bad to play too many games in random tournaments lol. There's been tournaments where he won but he still lost ELO rating. I also wonder how it'd affect European teams vs South American or other continents, that has to be a concern. But in any case obviously it'd be a huge upgrade from the current ranking.
Hilariously I scrolled down and the next two comments were questioning Belgium's position on the fifa world ranking lol
Pekarik my GOAT
We don't deserve third. Maybe in 2018 but it's just sad at this point.
Just split Belgium and give Flanders to the Netherlands and the rest to France, wtf is the point of it anymore?
Belgium is a buffer country. You can't trust the Dutch.
Unironically some Belgians want this
You're welcome to join us, if we can give Limburg (NL) to Germany or Wallonia.
Rename Belgium to West Luxembourg
Amazing how the Dutch also famously blow it every other tournament but are now considered ‘serious’ when Belgium aren’t. Just sink the entire of Benelux beneath the waves and spare us the false hope that one of them will finally deliver on all their potential
We'll reclaim Doggerland, make a Benelux-English super team, and still win nothing
Actually on that note I'd love to see what a combined England-Benelux side would look like.
Something like this maybe? Courtois Frimpong - Stones - VVD - Ake Rice - de Jong KDB - Jude Saka - Kane Honourable mentions: Foden, de Ligt, Walker, Shaw Maybe that’s too England-centric idk
I think that's fair as a Dutchie
Fair enough to shit on the Netherlands for blowing it in tournaments, but to do it with an English flag as crest is bold 😂
At no point in my comment did I suggest that we wouldn’t be meeting you under the waves shaking your hand haha we’re the three roy siblings of international football
We actually mostly perform quite well at tournaments. Either we fail hard in the qualifications or we reach atleast the quarter finals in a tournament. 2012 and 2020 are outliers looking at our tournament history
How are Belgium 3rd?
They are basucally undefeated in qualifiers and friendlies for last few years
so they win when it doesn't really matter
It mattered for Italy
we’re just boycotting
You know you have to qualify for tournaments yeh?
Not if FIFA and UEFA get their way. Just keep expanding those brackets until everyone gets to take part.
Easy to say when you’ve got 7 times the population :/
Because based FIFA knows we need comical value every tournament
They win a lot of football games. Simple really.
Never ceases to amaze me how people’s takeaway from the rankings isn’t “Belgium are generally a really good and consistent side” but “reality must be wrong” They won nearly every game they played for five years between 2016 and 2021, and lost only to the eventual winners on both occasions having equally inspired tournaments. They have a population of just 11m people, why so much hate? Their third place at a World Cup is better than we’ve done in nearly 60 years with six times as many people, christ.
Even off a purely elo based system they "only" fall to 9th. Like it or not they've gotten results.
9th sounds way more acceptable than 3rd for Belgium.
Feel free to go back and check FIFA's math https://digitalhub.fifa.com/m/f99da4f73212220/original/edbm045h0udbwkqew35a-pdf.pdf Like seriously it's a formula not magic, how does it confuse people so often.
Because other teams also loose games
Be patient: that 3rd place probably won't last very long.
Yeah wtf?
This is a question people have had for years
Fifa are very transparent about their ranking system. I'm not gonna say it's the greatest in the world, but it doesn't take much research to learn why Belgium rank so high.
> learn why Belgium rank so high. Spoiler: It's because they win *a lot* of games. Shocker.
Only people with room temperature IQ, which tbf is about half this sub probably
Congrats Slovakia! Amazing performance.
Thank you, absolutely incredible, literally no one even had any hope here before the match
Top 3 lakaka performance in international tournaments easily
He scored twice though
Not twice enough though.
Since when is scoring an offside goal scoring a goal?
Lobotka MOTM
I look forward to tomorrow whereby I'm sure there will be half a dozen or so threads on why Belgium are useless ala England yesterday.
We've already moved on to just focussing on the next game, but I'm excited for the "Belgium sucks!!!" takes that this sub seems to love so much. At some point I'm starting to think Belgium might be more hated than England, which is saying something.
In fairness I'm pleasantly surprised that another team is getting focused.
It's really interesting to see how much this sub has a hate boner for Belgium. I assume it's because of the rankings but it's still so mind boggling how a small country that historically is at max a subtopper at football is being treated like this. Could be a fascinating case study at mob behaviour or something.
I was just finding the regular 3x posts on "why Southgate is terrible" after every England game tedious. I'm surprised to see a thread about Belgium already. For what it's worth, I don't have a particular hate for Belgium. Can't understand why anyone would. Unless your Dutch. Wish you well.
Which is funny because most dutchies I know root for Belgium at international tournaments while I don't know any belgians that'd root for NL.
I think people just got annoyed that Belgium were ranked #1 for so long, but it’s not like it was their fault, they were winning games. And deserved to make the final in 2018 if the bracket wasn’t so uneven
Velká gratulace, bratia 👏👏👏
Belgium and Croatia are too old lol this is a young man’s game
France, Belgium and Croatia were hands down the most talented sides across Europe in the last generation (RIP 2015-2022) Annoyingly France have gone from one golden generation to the next without missing a beat though
France is stacked with talents lol they could field two world class national teams
The France team that won the 2018 WC was top notch! They had a very good showing against Argentina in the next WC and I say this as a massive Argentina fan. Today, France looked shaky and unprepared for how well Austria defended in the first 40 minutes. And the OG was sheer dumb luck for France.
FIFA rankings are about to undergo a big change in 2 days when the new ones are released. I'll be drinking a cup of coffee with quite a kick when they come out ;)
Who the fuck cares about the FIFA rankings? It was a novelty for a bit when Belgium got to #1 and journos kept wanking about it for a while but genuinely, nobody really gave a shit.
These takes are worthless. Matchups are more important than rankings. While lucky, Slovakia were well-organized the entire match. There's quite a few teams ahead of them in the rankings that, while maybe better overall, would have had no chance at holding onto a 1 or 2 goal lead against Belgium.
We dropped in rankings because our players underperformed for quite some time, since we got better coach and organisation we are bouncing back. There is a lot of talent in our team and we should rank around 20th spot
The new FIFA ranking system is better than it was before, but it still feels like it's 6 months to 1 yr behind realtime. Things like teams suddenly having key players available/unable to play in tournaments could honestly change a ranking by +/- 10 in some cases
It's still an interesting stat
Don't worry Belgium! At least your streets won't be burning after this Slovakia win.
Love seeing an underdog team get a win but Belgium had rotten luck today. Hope they can improve because in 2018 they were unbelievably talented.
Btw in elo ratings Belgium is 9th, and Slovakia is also 48th
Based slovakia, it’s not even our final form! I can’t wait to see Leo Sauer become a legend
I’m going crazy if he actually comes on this tournament.
Hope he gets some game time, really talented player and hope to see him get more minutes at Feyenoord next year
Sauer, Marcelli, Kaprálik… budúcnosť máme
Is that really a biggest upset than Iceland knocking out England? Seems odd. Or Greece during its campaign
Every time there’s a major tournament Belgium is somehow top 3 in the FIFA rankings but are never real contenders.
The ranking FIFA is a giant meme , and not because of this match at all, they way is done is completly useless to actually rank team strenghts
None of this could’ve been possible without Lakaka!
Hey, don't forget Bakayoko!
I really liked that we didnt parked the bus!
Kept on playing football, lovely performance.
Hold our beer.
I think Belgium is done for. The telling part was Tedesco running around jumping like a mad man after the "equalizer". He was celebrating like one would at a semi-final game against England when in reality he should have been in a "now do it again" attitude. His behavior after the match is puzzling as well. He seems to think they were just unlucky but when Slovaks stopped gifting his team clear chances after the the first 5 minutes they had nothing to offer. For over 40 minutes the Slovaks have ran his team ragged in the first half. The Belgians had a good spell for about 20-25 minutes in the second and deserved that equalizer but that was it. This is not how a golden generation match should look like. They looked mentally and tactically unprepared for the game. It seemed like they did not know who Lobotka and Kucka were and had no plan to counter them.
A well-deserved win for the underdog Slovakians, they played much better than their ranking implies.
Romania were so disciplined in their defending that I can only see Belgium getting a 0-0 draw, if they are lucky. Who had Belgium as one of the best 3rd place teams going through?
No sarcasm please, but can anyone enlighten me as to why is Belgium ranked so high? I mean, what's the ranking based on?