MOTD: Belgium 0-0 Wales

With due respect to a Wales team containing Gareth Bale and Aaron Ramsey, the sheer depth of their hosts Belgium should have seen them annihilated tonight. As individuals, many of Belgium’s squad, like Eden Hazard, Thibaut Courtois, Vincent Kompany (who didn’t feature tonight) and Jan Vertonghen, are among the top players in the world in their respective positions. In attack, Belgium are so stocked with talent that Christian Benteke, Romelu Lukaku, and Adnan Januzaj were all left on the bench at the start, whereas for the Welsh, Ramsey and Bale are the clear standouts, followed some distance by the likes of Ashley Williams and Joe Allen.

It wasn’t just tonight that Belgium failed to come together as a collective. In October they drew with Bosnia-Herzegovina and during the World Cup they failed to match (admittedly high) expectations, with their quarterfinal defeat, failing to win any match by more than a goal, and just scraping by the USA. On the whole, Belgium’s golden generation is yet to deliver on the big stage. Marc Wilmots is having a tough time pulling together their group, though that is easy to understand considering they are a very young and ethnically diverse group. The reality is, though, they should be beating more teams and doing better than they did against Wales tonight and this result left them third out of six in qualifying Group D, with four points from three games, behind both Wales and Israel. They are still well in control of their qualification, but should be dominating their group.

Today the home side came agonizingly close on multiple occasions and had double the shot count of Wales, but only maintained fifty percent of possession and especially in the second half, often times Wales looked the more likely to score. The Red Devils (and not the Manchester United variety), forced Wayne Hennessey into a few key stops, notably to deny Nacer Chadli fifteen minute in, and Nicolas Lombaerts found the inside of the woodwork after Wales failed to clear a corner, but Bale also put Courtois to work with a low free-kick. Eden Hazard as well as multiple other members of their starting eleven, including Vertonghen, showed some brilliant moments of individual skill but Belgium never really managed to work as one unit together.

In the second half things began to get tricky for them, as the match opened up quite a bit. It was often end-to-end, and Bale flashed a shot wide before Hal Robson-Kanu tested Courtois. Belgium hardly formed a real chance in the second period, although in the fifth of six minutes of stoppage time Hennessy was forced to make a brilliant save to deny Axel Witsel from a corner before another Wales defender had to clear the ball off the line. Belgium will feel unlucky not to get the result, but really didn’t look like scoring a winner until those final few minutes. And credit also has to go to Wales, who held firm in the first half and ventured forward in the second. Qualification for their first major tournament since 1976 is looking likely and not just because of Euro 2016’s expansion of teams – they are currently first in their group having already faced Bosnia-Herzegovina and Belgium, two of their biggest challengers once.
Man of the Match: Eden Hazard