The Rise of the Red Devils

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The Rise of the Red Devils

How Belgium built one of the top contenders for the 2014 World Cup, and what the team means to thisfractious nation

bySam Knighton May 15, 2014Print

1. Famous BelgiansWhen I was about 10 years old, my father told me the joke about famous Belgians. Few things tickle my fathermore than pithy little axioms that turn out to be unarguable. Never sleep with a woman who keeps a diary.Always jump off the high side of a sinking ship. Great art is about love and loss. Dont commit troops to a landwar in Asia. You cant name 10 famous Belgians.

For a long time, the line held. A nice piece of English condescension toward an odd, troubled little Europeancountry that spent the first half of the 20th century getting invaded and the second half hosting internationalorganizations that were too boring to exist anywhere else. And the wisecrack was trueyou couldnt get to 10You started withTintin,or Herg, (or Georges Remi, the actual cartoonist). Then you gotEddy Merckx,the

cyclist. Then, if you were growing up in Britain in the 1980s, like me, and you saw him on TV every weekend,you asked if you were allowedPoirot,even though he was fictional. And Poirot was permitted. Because guesswhat? You werent getting to 10. And sure, you could scour your sisters encyclopedia and getLeo Baekeland,who invented a kind of plastic calledBakelite,and you might go through a pretentious surrealist phase as ateenager withRen Magritteposters on your walls and add him to the mix. You could kid yourself that youwere making progress. But you knew, and your dad knew, and even Belgium knew, that there was no chance ofmaking it to 10. It could just as well have been five.

So I was conscious of a tiny feeling of lossthe latest filing-away of my childhoodwhen I rode the trainrecently from London to Brussels and stood on the edge of a soccer field containing no fewer than 15 famousBelgians. My fathers wit gave out right before my eyes as I watched the members of the national team
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undertake some light evening training a couple days before their final preWorld Cup friendly against IvoryCoast. And that is because, without much warning and without heeding the idea that it is not really associatedwith world-class soccer, Belgium has recently become a factory for many of the sportsbest-known and mostvaluable players. The Red Devils, as they are known, are expected to be one of the most exciting teams in thissummers tournament.

A few yards away, on the other side of a low hedge, Simon Mignolet and Thibaut Courtois, of Liverpool andAtletico Madrid, were throwing themselves through drills with a quiet, gum-chewing intensity. The two men are

among the finest young goalkeepers in the world. Mignolet is fast and sturdy, like a prodigiously giftedfarmhand, but Courtois, who is just 22 and has the long frame of a swimmer, has recently displaced him asBelgiums starter. (Everyone agrees Mignolet has done nothing wrong; Courtois, whose impossible save

helped knock Chelsea out of this years Champions League, is just better.) Beyond them, an equally starrysquad was playing a loose game of attack and defense against a backdrop of low houses, scrub, and trees. A fewgeese flew over as Daniel van Buyten, the Bayern Munich defender, cut inside Axel Witsel, a $55.2 millionsigning for Zenit St. Petersburg in 2012, and thrashed the ball high into the roof of the net.

It is difficult to convey the strangeness of watching this. Until I found the celebrity athletes in mid-training, mysurroundings and the whole vibe had been, well, extremely Belgian. I had arrived earlier in the afternoon andtaken the metro to the green, low-density suburbs outside Brussels. Posters in the stations showed the rate of

climate change in the Antarctic. Challenging piano music, possibly Dvok, played through the PA system. Idisembarked at Eddy Merckx station and walked through a quiet landscape of modest sporting facilitiesadry ski slope, locked up for spring, and a small stadium tucked into the side of a hill. Runners jogged down to asmall lake. There were childrens nurseries. People nodded good evening to one another. Then, all of a sudden Iwas face-to-chest with Marouane Fellaini, the gangling, microphone-haired $45.4 million Manchester Unitedmidfielder.

It was jarring. History says you dont find these players here. Belgium is not Holland or France or Germany. Its

never been a first-rank soccer nation. Until recently, Belgiums much larger claim to fame has been its quiet,stubborn doubt that it is a nation at all. The 11 million people who comprise its populationa collection ofFrench speakers, Dutch-speaking Flemish, and ethnic Germansoften give the impression that they just

happen to live there. (Belgium recently went two years without an elected government, and its largest politicalparty, the Flemish NVA, is committed to the long-term breakup of the country.) Belgiums greatestachievement in the beautiful game remains winning gold at the 1920 Olympics, when its Czechoslovakianopponents abandoned the final at halftime in a protest over the refereeing.

So even the people of Belgium have needed a few years to adjust to having a national team worth hundreds ofmillions of dollars in transfer fees and expected to last deep into the 2014 World Cup. People in the soccerworld noticed something stirring at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, when the countrys under-23 side reached thesemifinals. But the new sharp kids didnt cut it in the homeland. They didnt look or act like Belgiums capable

teams of the pastclever, bearded practitioners of the offside trap, with a gifted striker up front to snaffle thegoals. The new generation didnt seem to care much, either. They turned up late for training. They didnt defer

to their old, mediocre coaches. They failed to make the World Cup in 2010 and even the EuropeanChampionships in 2012, when they got caught up in ridiculous, naive games instead of grinding out resultsagainst weaker teams during the qualification period. The most infamous example was a 4-4 draw with Austriain October 2010, in which Belgium, playing at home, gave up two leads to a team playing with 10 men. In2011, arguably the most talented player of the lot, Eden Hazardnow the $43.8 million fulcrum of ChelseaFCgot subbed out during a qualifier against Turkey and walked straight out toeat a burger in the parking lotwhile the match carried on inside. The Belgian press named them The Vuitton Generation.

But things are different now. Everyone is a few years older. They are richer and more determined. SinceBeijing, Belgiums best players almost the entire national squadhave gone abroad to play for some of thewealthiest clubs in Europe. According to Jacques Lichtenstein, the agent who represents Vincent Kompany, the
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captain and cornerstone of both Belgium and Manchester City, the Vuitton boys are now ready to contemplate anational, collective endeavor. Individually, already they have reached something, Lichtenstein told me. Nowall of a sudden they want to tell their offspring they have won the cups[that] they have played in the biggestcompetition, they have been to the World Cup.

Theyve got the coach they want, too. Before he took over in May 2012, Marc Wilmots, a former striker for the

national team who had a brief career as a Belgian senator, met with the senior players and made sure of theirsupport. That summer, the Red Devils took off. In a friendly game now spliced, slow-mod, set to European

house music, and sprayed all over YouTube, Belgium dominated the Netherlands, their next-door neighbors andpermanent soccer superiors, 4-2. And they didnt just score more. They out-swerved and out-tricked the Dutch.They tore them a new one.

We were attacking Holland! Eric Reynaerts, the leader of the teamsofficial fan club, told me, as if this weresubverting all that is natural in the world. I have never seen that! Under Wilmots, the new Belgian playershave appeared to banish not only Belgiums old style of soccer (opportunistic, defensively minded) bu t also anational way of thinking. We are always the small Belgians, Reynaerts said. Every time, we are modest.

Now there is a little bit of realizing we can be big, too. The current side want the ball at their feet. To make

rhythms. To suck in other teams with neat, going-nowhere triangles, before springing the ball to the free man.(Here,at 57 seconds). In Hazard and Napoli winger Dries Mertens, they havepickpockets and shufflers.In

Kompany, Fellaini, and their big, physical strikers, Belgium has enforcers and men to run through walls. LastOctober, Belgium qualified for the World Cup without losing a game. The team reached an all-time high of fifthin the FIFA world rankings, up 59 places in three years, and when you talk to people in Belgium now about theteams chances in Brazil, no one wants to speak about limits. If they dont get to the quarterfinal, Lichtensteinsaid, I think everyone will be disappointed.

And why shouldnt they be? As the evening training session in Brussels wound down, I turned around to look

into the locker room, where some of the most precious players of all were being softly pummeled and oiled.Hazard was talking a mile a minute to Christian Benteke, the bulky no. 9 for Aston Villa and Wilmots first-choice striker (who has since suffered an Achilles injury and wont be able to play at the World Cup). Sitting

alone, a few feet away, was Kompany. Twenty-four hours earlier, he had lifted Englands League Cup,

Manchester Citys first trophy of the season, in front of 90,000 people at Wembley Stadium. This past Sunday,he thumped in the decisive second goal against West Ham to seal the clubs second Premiership title in threeyears. And here in Belgium, Kompany was staring out at the pitch, like a general contemplating battle, theshadows of his teammates growing long in the fading light.

2. A Utopian System of Soccer

Michel Sablons phone doesnt stop ringing. He is the man credited with building the Belgian soccer productionline. When we met at the headquarters of the Royal Belgian Football Association, Sablon had just returned froma trip to Eastern Europe, where he had been visiting coaches and national federations from Bulgaria toAzerbaijan. Everyone had been begging for secrets. Sablon, who is 67, looked like he could do with a break.Too many, he said, when I asked how many countries were calling him these days. I was on Romaniantelevision for two hours.

Belgiums rise began with humiliation. Sablon was an assistant coach at the 1986 World Cup for Belgiums lastgolden generation. Built on brilliant goalkeeper Jean-Marie Pfaff and midfielder Enzo Scifo, known as LePetit Pel, the team reached the semifinals. A decade and a half later, Sablon was asked to run the Belgian halfof Euro 2000, which the country cohosted with Holland. But the tournament was a disaster for the nationalteam. Boring, slow and unimaginativetalking instead of playing, says Sablon the Belgians scored twogoals in four minutes in their first match against Sweden and did precisely nothing after that. Belgium lost itssubsequent games and became the first-ever host of a European tournament to be knocked out in the first round.
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Sablon became the technical director of the Belgian FA two years later. His first move was to tear up theexisting system. We started from scratch, he explained. We said, What were doing now, it doesnt work.The national team was out of ideas. The youth teams coming through werent getting any better. Coaching wasmired in outdated soccer dogma8-year-old girls were being asked to play as liberos, sweepers in theBeckenbauer mold, because Belgiums professional teams had a thing for playing three central defenders at thetime. It didnt make sense to teach the game that way. No one was having any fun.

Sablon worked like a maniac. He spent two years driving to Belgian youth competitions and studying what the

French and Dutch national teams (at the time the strongest in the world) were up to. He commissionedresearchers at the University of Leuven to analyze 1,600 hours of footage of young boys playing 11-on-11 tofigure out how often they actually touched the ball (an average of four touches per player every 20 minutes). Heconvened Peoples Congressstyle meetings with groups of coaches from various levels of Belgian football todiscuss formations and training methods. We were crazy, of course, he told me. We never stopped. Westarted in the morning and we finished in the night. Every day, Saturday and Sunday.

The result, unveiled in 2004, was Belgiums master plan, called G-A-GGlobal-Analytique-Globalin Frenchor Globaal-Analytisch-Globaalin Dutch. The idea was to fuse the best of French soccerits emphasis onphysical power and tactical efficiency, hence Analytique with the dreamy technique of the Dutch(Global), and invent a new kind of exciting, attacking soccer (Global again). Our ultimate goal is

deliberately utopian, Sablons successor, Bob Browaeys, said recently. (Sablon retired from the FA in 2012.)One hundred percent possession of the ball.

In practice, G-A-G means standardization. All over Belgium these days, boys and girls grow up playing soccerthe same way. Every school, youth academy, and village team plays the same formation4-3-3, with classic,dribbling wingersand follows the same progression up to the 11-on-a-side game. Kids under the age of 7play 2-on-2; under-9s play 5-on-5; under-11s play 8-on-8. They never use more than half the field. It is onlywhen theyre 12 years old that boys and girls are finally introduced to a full-size pitch and the idea of a longpass.

It hasnt been easy. Amateur clubs grouse about change and squabble over money. Young Belgian teams also

lose a lot. Its harder to be utopian than it is to play the offside trap. It takes some five or six years for ouryouth teams, Sablon said. They play open. They are attacking all the time. They lose, but that is not ourproblem The identity and the development of the players is much more important than that.

When I spoke to coaches of Belgiums professional teams, no one disputed the impact of Sablons plan. It was

there in the PowerPoint presentations they showed to parents of boys entering their academies, and it was therewhen I walked into King Baudouin Stadium the morning before the Ivory Coast match and saw the Red Devilsrunning their drills. The entire squad, except for the goalkeepers, was crammed into a coned-out section of thepitch between the midfield line and the edge of the penalty area. In teams of 12, they were playing two-touchand trying to keep the ball from each other. Circulation de balleis played wherever soccer is taught in Belgium,and the worlds fourth-most expensive team at this summers World Cup was going at it like 9-year-olds. No

goals, no direction of play, just swarming up and down, looking for neat passes, throwing themselves atinterceptions. Whenever the ball went out of bounds, Coach Wilmots, who stood amid his players like a manfeeding pigeons in the park, dropped another ball in, and the flock went at it again.


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3. Belgium and the Economic Pecking Order of European Soccer

G-A-G isnt the end of the story. It might not even be the beginning. This is Belgium, after all, where stories arefragmented and nobody agrees on the order of things. It also happens to be a very active corner of Europes

multibillion-dollar soccer market, and some experts see the Red Devils rise as a natural outgrowth of sportingcapitalism. You often hear this from Belgiums professional clubs, and one afternoon I took the train out to thecountrys far eastern border to visit a team called KRC Genk.

Genk is a former coal-mining town. Beyond its borders, the perfect triangles of slag heaps stand around in thesunshine. Being Flemish, its team, Racing Genk, carries the prefixKoninklijke. (Clubs in BelgiumsFrancophone south use the prefixRoyal.) Influenced from its founding by Dutch football and, in particular, bythe model of Ajax Amsterdam, KRC Genk won Belgiums Jupiler League championship in 2011. Results havebeen patchier since then, but the club, like Ajax, is admired across Europe for its knack for findingextraordinary young players in its youth academy. Christian Benteke, Thibaut Courtois, and Kevin De Bruyne(a young, two-footed midfielder sold by Chelsea toWolfsburgfor $25.3 million this January) all came throughGenk, and when I toured the clubs shining, box-fresh facilities, its youth director, Roland Breugelmans,pointed out their names printed on the wall.

That is the reason why we can grow, he said. The sales of Courtois and De Bruyne in 2012 enabled the clubto add another floor to its training complex. When I asked Breugelmans how Genk managed to discover playerslike this in a quiet, postindustrial corner of Belgium and with just 220 boys in the clubs youth program, he

replied: We have no choice.

The golden generation is a romantic old saw in soccer, but what has happened at KFC Genk suggests that

Belgiums flowering of talent has more to do with economic specialization than a serendipitous glut of natural-born talent. Next to the leagues of Spain, England, and Germany, Belgiums professional game is tiny andinherently constrained. Thirty-four teams play for a perennially divided television audience of 6 million Flemishand 4.5 million French speakers. The most successful Belgian teams get broadcast revenues worth about $6.8million per season. By contrast, the bottom club in the English Premier League got $128.4 million for its 2013-14 rights. Competing in an open market with other European clubs whose budgets are five, six, or 10 timesgreater than the wealthiest Belgian teams budgets, professional soccer in Belgium is subject to the constant,unthinking erosion of other peoples money.

The only way for Belgian teams to survive financially has been to cultivate young talent and then cash it in withtransfers to wealthier foreign clubs. This is Belgiums competitive niche, and coaches and clubs have gotten

very, very good at it. It is our business model, said Jean-Francois De Sart, the technical director of StandardLiege, currently Belgiums top side. As usual, Liege is expected to sell its best player, a young forward namedMichy Batshuayi,this summer. I asked De Sart if this endless unearthing, nurturing, and selling of playerswithout ever seeing the final result of his laborsdepressed him. No, he said. We try to improve ourbudget, but, OK, it is also the way to make, to live a life We know in which world we are in.

And in many ways, the Red Devils of 2014 are the payoff. Belgiums domestic clubs might be too small and toopoor to retain the players they have developed, but now, at last, there is a chance for everything to cometogether. Other countries have already done this. The top French and Dutch players have been playing abroadfor 20 years or more. But this is the first Belgian generation to successfully graduate, en masse, to Europes topteams. Maybe that is why it feels like an achievement. It is special, said De Sart, who used to run the nationalyouth teams under Sablon. In England they dont need young players. They dont need to invest They will

do it, but they dont need to. We need it. Absolutely.
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4. The New Belgians

So there has been a plan. There has been the ruthless capitalism of the worlds most popular sport. But there hasalso been a third impetus shaping Belgiums World Cup team, and that is immigration. The morning before the

match, watching the squad go through its G-A-G routines at the national stadium, it was impossible not to bestruck by the contrast between the all-white coaching staff, the mixed ethnicity of the players (the current RedDevils have roots from Morocco to Indonesia, Martinique to Congo), and the crowd that had come to watch.

Like every country in Europe, Belgium has been the subject of waves of immigration since the late 1960s.(Around 20 percent of the current population is foreign-born.) But soccer has always been unusually presentas a tool, mirror, and binding agentin Belgiums attempts to adapt toa new kind of society. In turn, fromthe pioneering hired guns in the Jupiler League to the kids growing up in rough parts of Brussels and Lige,Congolese and Moroccan players have changed the way the nation plays football. More intricacy. More feints.More urban. Morefreestyle. Michel Sablon recognized this when he overhauled the countrys approach to thegame a decade ago. The phrase le football de rue(street soccer) is everywhere in Belgian FA documents.Browaeys, Sablons successor, speaks of the childlike pleasure of the game played this way. And after theyfinished the possession game at the stadium, it was possible to see the Belgian players enjoying themselves.

In their next drill, a player swept the ball from the center circle deep out to the wing, where a teammate had tocontrol it with a single touch inside a small box of cones, and then return a cross for the first player to score.The crowd whooped and groaned as Kompany, Benteke, and Fellaini took turns throwing themselves at errantcrosses and burying the ball in the net. The real pleasure, however, was in watching that first controlling touch:the extravagant neatness of Hazard, Witsel, and Everton winger Kevin Mirallas; the athletic OCD to leap andcommand the ball in such a narrow space, then run all the way around it, and then smack it somewhere else. Onthe way back to my room that night, near Brusselss main railway station, I saw a couple kids playing a nearly

identical game in the street. They were taking two touchesno moreand bending their bodies to fit rules oftheir own devising. The pointless joy of that composition.

Of course, there is more going on with le football de ruein Belgium than step-overs and quick hips and drag-backs. The current team has drawn comparisons to Frances World Cup champion rainbow team of 1998 as a symbol of multicultural possibility. However, this being Belgium, a vaguely constructed nation whosepopulation has never truly embraced Belgian identity in the first place, it can feel foolish to make any sweepingstatements about society and what such things symbolize. Sometimes it can feel crazy to even ask questions.

After the players had finished training that morning, we all trooped to a press briefing and listened to the usualblandishments. Kompany and Wilmots, switching between French and Dutch, talked about the belief and thespirit in the squad and the skill of the Ivorian players. Then I asked Wilmots to compare the team he wasmanaging to the Belgian teams he had played for in the 1990s. He looked at me as if I were daft. What kind ofa question is that? he snapped. Wilmots batted the microphone away in irritation. I dont speak about the past.I speak about the future. Its the same for the players. They will write their own history.


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5. The Last Belgians

Belgium can be a bit like that. Theres so much going on beneath the surface. Being there reminded me of ahousehold where the parents have separated but decided to remain in the same home because it makes financialsense. From the outside, it might seem like a sensible arrangement, but on the inside there are all theseuncrossable lines the inhabitants have internalizedan unseen tracery of sadness, of love that did not last. In away, thats Belgium.

One night, the sportswriter Raf Willems tried to explain it to me. We met in Lier, about 30 miles north ofBrussels, the hometown ofJan Ceulemans,the most capped player in Belgiums history. Willems has written 30books about soccer, including, most recently, one about Belgian players in the Premier League. Belgium is one

of the best countries to live in the world, he said. But we dont know it. We think it is really bad to live here.

The condensed version goes like this: For many centuries, the land north of France was a quilt of duchies, citiesand bishoprics that marked the border between Romance (French, Latin) and Germanic Europe. People spokeFrisian, Dutch, French, German, and Luxembourgian. After the Battle of Waterloo, in 1815, the great powers ofEurope tried to stitch the Netherlands and the Southern Netherlandsgroups of provinces that had split onreligious grounds two centuries earlierinto a single country. But it didnt work. It came apart again. Whatwas left was Belgium. It is a little bit said Willems. He paused. It is not a real country.

Back then, the invented nationnamed after the Belges, a long-lost Celtic tribewas dominated by aFrench-speaking liberal elite who opened banks and railways and laid down rules for the Flemish-speakingyokels in the fields. But ever since, the pendulum has been swinging the other way, with the countrys Flemish

majority (around 60 percent of the population) steadily asserting its linguistic, economic, and political power,while the French speakers have hung on for dear life. The result is a constantly shifting, almost perfectlyincomprehensible experiment in compromisean antidote to nationalism and a magnet for surrealists. There isthe Flemish north, the French-speaking south, and the shared capital of Brussels, which has its own parliament.(Everyone hates Brussels, explained Willems, but they are proud of themselves.) The country is governed

through a riddle of regions that are communities and communities that arent regions. And dont get smart andthink that Belgium is bilingual, or even trilingual, because of its 74,000 German speakers. This is the land ofofficial dual monolingualism. That is our absurdism, said Willems. Belgium is an absurd country. That is astatement, you know that?

The official line is that soccer has somehow managed to steer clear of all this. The king and football are theonly things that hold the country together goes the popular clich. In reality, the sport has been as contested aseverything else. The game was introduced by French urban elites in the 1880s. They insisted on administering itin the French language, even after the Flemish masses had also started playing. By the late 1920sa time ofgeneral Flemish activisma referee named Jules Vranken had decided he was fed up and established a rivalFlemish Football Association. Clubs with a Flemish character, affiliate with us and break off from the Belgianassociation, he appealed. Our success depends on you.

And for a time, it appeared as if soccerlike Belgiums school system, itsbar association, and its Boy Scoutswould split along linguistic lines. More than 400 clubs defected. The bifurcation might have becomepermanent, but then Flemish football took a turn for the fascist. Vranken was succeeded by Robert Verbelen, aright-wing nationalist who admired the sporting intensity of Hitlers Germany and who would go on to foundthe Flemish SS after the Nazi invasion of 1940. A great miracle took place, Verbelen wrote that summer in

Volk en Staat, a Flemish nationalist newspaper. Out of the east there came a people, a superior broedervolk(fraternal people) Flemish people will not stay behind. After the war, Verbelen fled to Austria andsoccerseparatism disappeared with him. The Belgian FA published its rules in Dutch, and football became strikinglynational and harmonious. The only unwritten rule, present in the mind of every Red Devils coach, was to pick a
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roughly equal number of Flemish and French-speaking players. Crowds watching the national team chanted inEnglish to circumvent the language problem.

This was the unhappily balanced environment into which immigrants, mainly from around the MediterraneanSea and North Africa, but also from farther south, began arriving in large numbers in the late 1980s. Thedemographic shift was a shock, particularly in Belgiums urban centers, many of which had aging, shrinking

populations. Unlike in, for example, Paris, the poorer districts of many Belgian cities are centrally located, sothe newcomersyoung Africans, Turks, and Moroccans, looking for work and bearing childrenwere

particularly visible. A series of immigrant riots, mainly over joblessness and cramped housing, shook thecountry in the spring of 1991. Immigration also forced many ordinary Belgians to confront their countryscolonial shame in Congo. Between 1885 and 1908, the enormous central African state, 80 times the size ofBelgium, was owned as a personal possession of the Belgian King Leopold II. Millions of Congolese died in agenocidal rubber production program that made Belgium rich.

There is a moment of the history where one doesnt speak about, Johan Leman, a Belgian anthropologist, told

me. That is the Leopold II period. Like most of his generation, the only image Leman had of Congo growing

up was as a model African villageessentially a human zoohe saw at the Brussels World Fair in 1958.Congo became independent two years later, but in the late 1980s the nation began to drift into civil warprompting an exodus of mostly educated, middle-class Congolese to their highly ambivalent former colonizer.

In 1989, Leman was put in charge of drawing up Belgiums first-ever migrants policy to help integrate the newsociety.

And one of Lemans solutions was soccer. The idea was, OK, we will not find employment immediately for all

these young people, he said. Not that all people would become engineers. But you can create hope, and sportis one of these instruments. You can create role models in such districts [and] also role models with somesignificance for the people outside. So Leman started persuading crowded municipalities to build the sturdy,

concrete soccer cages that now exist all over Belgium. Football, he said. It was really obvious to play that

card The only thing you needed was a piece of field.

You cant draw a straight line from Belgiums waves of immigration and Lemans soccer cages to the Red

Devils going to Brazil this summer, but you also cant ignore the connection. Of the present team, MarouaneFellaini, Mousa Dembele (the Tottenham Hotspur midfielder), Anthony Vanden Borre, and Vincent Kompanyare all sons of African immigrants, and they all grew up playing le football de rue. In 2013, Kompany bought astreet soccer club in Brussels, renamed it Brussels BX, and established a system of financial incentives topersuade players to go to school.

The link with Congo is even plainer. Romelu Lukaku, the Chelsea striker currently on loan at Everton, who willlead the line for Belgium this summer in the absence of Benteke, is the son of Roger Lukaku, who played forZaire at the 1994 World Cup. Benteke is the son of a former Congolese military commander. Vanden Borre wasborn there, while Kompanys father, Pierre, was a student revolutionary who fled the country in 1968. Thename Kompany comes from the familys former servitude to a Belgian silver mine. I think the impact is not

small or medium, said Lichtenstein, the agent, when we spoke about Congos part in the rise of Belgianfootball. I think that the Congolese people and the country of Congo can feel that they have a big participation

in the success, and the proudness, and the results, and the talent, that we have in our national team.

Since he wrote his policy, Leman has seen Belgian society undergo profound changes. Brussels is now theyoungest region in the country; more than half its residents are from overseas. Young black men like Kompanyand the pop singerStromae,whose father was killed in the Rwandan genocide, are continentwide celebritiesstone-cold, famous Belgians.

And heres the thing: The new Belgians dont really get the Flemish-French angst situation. They quite likeBelgium as it is. Before I went to Brussels, I read a 1998 academic paper by two historians at the Free
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University of Brussels titled Are Immigrants the Last Belgians? It described the national outlook in typically

self-deprecating terms: There wasno Belgian dream. Belgium was often a non-choice But the articlealso put forward the idea that the countrys newest citizens might be the first to truly accept Belgium on its own

eccentric terms. Leman believes that theory has come true. How to explain? he said. Our national

discussions are internal discussions, and very domestic, and these guys coming from outside look at Belgiumand they say, Why destroy this country? With its nice system?

The word for this new, younger patriotism is Belgitude. Plenty of older Belgians remain skeptical of it. That

is, after all, their ideological default. I despise my own past and that of others, wrote the artist Magritte. Idespise resignation, patience, professional heroism, and all the obligatory sentiments. I also despise thedecorative arts, folklore, advertising, radio announcers voices, aerodynamics, the Boy Scouts, the smell of

naphtha, the news, and drunks.

Its a tough crowd, no doubt. But Belgiums soccer team does represent a powerful kind of wholenessin itsexcellence, in its youth, in its disconnection from the countrys internecine hang-ups, and in its presentationwithin the feel-good vernacular of world soccer. Its as if the kids growing up in their parents sad and dividedhouse decided to be a family, after all. The myth and foundation of Belgium is lacking, Leman said. And ofcourse it is not a football team that will create this narrative. But believe me, if they arrive among the last eight,and surely if they arrive among the last four teams in Brazil, you will see what happens in Brussels, eh?

6. Come On, Feel the Belgitude

Lets not get carried away. This is still Belgium. On the morning of the Ivory Coast match, I went to meet Ben

Weyts, vice-president of the NVA, the countrys main Flemish party, who is also a soccer fan. By then I hadbeen in the country a few days, and I was developing a sense for its near-constant, low-frequency peculiarity.Every morning in the street outside the apartment where I was staying, I walked past a smart steel platformmounted with a trumpet. Nobody ever blew it. The metro entrance was decorated with a case of mammoth andelk bones. When I got to the Belgian Parliament, a sign on the building told me it was the former headquartersof the countrys railway company. A large model train was on display in the lobby. This stuff gets to you inBelgium. You end up wondering how seriously to take anything.

That is definitely how people like Weyts see Belgitude and Belgium, in a way. The NVA isnt extreme. Itgets 17 percent of the national vote and 28 percent in Flanders, which makes it the countrys largest political

party, and it doesnt want Belgium to break up overnight. It campaigns instead for a gradual sense of drift calledconfederalism and for Belgium to dissolve peacefully over several decades. (It wont say how many.)

Necessary in Flanders, Useful in Europe is the partys slogan, emphasizing its complex local and

supranational loyalties. But the line might as well be: Why fake it, Belgium? Its just not happening. And

thats what Weyts thinks when he watches the Red Devils. Of course I support them, he deadpanned to me.There is no other national team that has as many Flemish players.

Weyts almost sounded as if he felt sorry for the young, fabulously gifted players being forced to pull on thenational teams red jerseys and represent such an illogical construct. They think,I am part of the Belgianfootball team, I should promote Belgium too, he said. But in fact, in reality, inBelgian society, there isadivision. And whether you want to promote a nonexistent Belgian identity or not, I dont care. But in fact, you

see that you get two different types of people. You have the Flemish, and you have the French-speaking. Andthey are each going their own way. Is that a problem? I dont think so.

Few people I spoke to in Belgium expected the feel-good vibes around the Red Devils or hip symbols likeStromae (his songTa Fteis the countrys official World Cup anthem) to have any noticeable impact on thelevel of separatist feeling in this months parliamentary elections, which will occur a few weeks before the
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tournament begins. Yet there is still something faintly unreal about watching Belgiums largest political partyface off, however politely, with one of its most popular national symbols.

People in Belgium still talka lotabout an exchange that took place in 2012 between Vincent Kompanyand NVA chairman Bart De Wever. On winning electoral control of the Flemish city of Antwerp, De Wevertold the partys supporters: Antwerp is for everybody, but tonight, especially for us. A few days later, after

winning a World Cup qualifier in Scotland, Kompanytweeted in response:Belgium is for everybody, buttonight, especially for us! and was widely seen to have come out the bigger man.

It still bothers the NVA. Kompany is widely expected to enter politics when he retires from footballasymbol of a new, united Belgium. I asked Weyts what he thought of him. Just hit the ball, he said. Thats it.And try to make a goal.

I got to the stadium about an hour before kickoff. The streets were full of thousands of people in red devil hornsand synthetic Afrosa homage toFellainipainted in the Belgian tricolor. Between the merchandise, theneatly painted faces, and the thick smell of sausages and French fries, it was impossible to figure out ifunderneath it all, this long-divided country was finding some unlikely, low-risk way to be happy by way of theglobalized, generic code of 21st-century world soccer. I bought a beer and met a Flemish student named Thijs.He seemed to think so: I know it sounds stupid that football can unite a country, but its really happening. The

crowds poured past. Thijs talked about Stromae and Belgitude and, above all, Kompany. He is a footballplayer, he said. But he looks beyond.

Inside, the Red Devils were going through their familiar drills. Circulation de balle. A Stromae song wasplaying. On the opposite side of the field, the experienced Ivory Coast team of Didier Drogba and Yaya Tour,another golden generation, long familiar with the weight of hope, warmed up in full-length bright orangetracksuits. We stood, and the crowd made itIm not sure how through the alternating French, Dutch, andGerman lines of Belgiums national anthem.

After days of talking about the meaning of Belgian football, it was a relief to just watch the team play. Within afew minutes, the Red Devils got their circulationgoing. The Afros of Witsel and Fellaini zigzagged up and

down the pitch at a more or less constant distance, like atoms connected by an invisible force. Wall passessnapped off Mirallas on the right wing and Dries Mertens on the left, looking to set Benteke through, or to catchDe Bruyne sprinting into the play from behind. The Ivorians couldnt keep track. Fellaini was playing with thefreedom of being away from Manchester, and finally, 34 minutes in, he flung himself at a corner and scored aheader to give the Red Devils the lead. The crowd, contented but short of a common language, found a perfectlyBelgian solution by humming VerdisTriumphal March.Led by Kompany, whose every tackle andinterception was met with cheers, the team played out the half with a swagger.

In the press room, Belgiums football writers werent surprised. Screens showed Belgiums nine shots on goalto Ivory Coasts zero. I found Raf Willems eating a pastry. He was there researching his next book. Iremembered what he had told me a few days before, about the brand-new, frankly un-Belgian confidence of

these players. Now we want to dominate the game and we want to win the World Cup, he had said. Theywant to win the World Cup! They became the state of mind for Belgium for the 21st century. Two minutesinto the second half, Benteke missed a gaping chance. But in Belgiums next attack, the Ivorian keeper couldnt

prevent a savage cross from Radja Nainggolan, the son of an Indonesian father and one of Belgiums fringe

players, from crashing into the net. Two-nil. Everyone began to think about the tougher teams waiting in Brazil.

And then something strange happened. Or maybe, because this was Belgium, it wasnt strange at all. The gamewent loose. The tight patterns of the first half began to fray, and suddenly Manchester Citys other star, theIvorian midfielder Tour, began to pick up the pieces. The vis itors canny tackles and fouls broke the Belgiansrhythm. The crowd became distracted. Wilmots sent Eden Hazard on, and he was cut down in a heap on his firsttouch. Ten minutes later, Didier Drogba scuffed in a goal for Ivory Coast, and the last 15 minutes became nervy
https://twitter.com/VincentKompany/status/258326197535113216https://twitter.com/VincentKompany/status/258326197535113216https://twitter.com/VincentKompany/status/258326197535113216https://www.google.com/search?q=fellaini&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS545US545&es_sm=91&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=4JlpU-3qEOLCyQGt8IHwDw&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ&biw=1433&bih=715https://www.google.com/search?q=fellaini&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS545US545&es_sm=91&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=4JlpU-3qEOLCyQGt8IHwDw&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ&biw=1433&bih=715https://www.google.com/search?q=fellaini&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS545US545&es_sm=91&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=4JlpU-3qEOLCyQGt8IHwDw&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ&biw=1433&bih=715https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AssDQbaIP_Ihttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AssDQbaIP_Ihttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AssDQbaIP_Ihttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AssDQbaIP_Ihttps://www.google.com/search?q=fellaini&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS545US545&es_sm=91&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=4JlpU-3qEOLCyQGt8IHwDw&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ&biw=1433&bih=715https://twitter.com/VincentKompany/status/258326197535113216


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and ill-formed. It looked as if the Red Devils, now playing through Hazard, could score at any moment, but alsoas if they were growing more vulnerable at the same time. Decisions went awry. It was the Vuitton Generationall over again. In the 84th minute, Lukaku and Mertens missed two chances to put the game away. Trumpetsblasted nervously from the stands. In injury time, the Belgian defense failed to clear a free kick, and Ivorianwinger Max Gradel rolled the equalizer into the corner. The shot was slow, but precise. Courtois didnt move.

No one knew what to say after the game. It was supposed to be the Red Devils triumphant send-off, a warningof what they might achieve this summer. Instead, it brought back familiar doubts about the young teams

seriousness, the abandoning of old virtues, and the unlikeliness of this new and happy Belgium. The stadiumemptied quickly. It was a bit stupid, Courtois told reporters after the game. A bit frustrating. Kompany was

calmer. The first half was under control, he said. They didnt have any chances. That is the benchmark. It

was good that everyone was disappointed. There is pressure, Kompany added, but its good pressure. Thecaptain thanked everyone. He said goodnight, and the players boarded their bus before dispersing again acrossthe continentback to their billion-dollar clubs, their Champions League showdowns. In a month or two,these glimmering pieces of an unmade nation would reassemble for Brazil. And I walked to the metro, where Ifound a silent army of confused, face-painted, flag-draped Belgians, waiting for a ride home.

Documents

The Rise of the Red Devils