World Cup column: Croatia show Belgium how to age a golden generation gracefully
For the heavyweights of international football, the quality of their squad seems to matter not when they turn up at a World Cup. It can often seem that the badge on the shirt and the weight of history alone can force them through the rounds of the tournament, brushing aside intriguing darks horses and more tactically astute, less storied rivals in the process.
Back-to-back group stage exits for four-time winners Germany maybe proves this accepted wisdom is losing its relevancy, but for a nation like Croatia, or say Belgium, and possibly even England for anyone less inebriated by the glamour of 56 years of glorious failure, it usually takes the enigma of a ‘golden generation’ of players for tournament casuals to get excited about their chances of success.
The goalless draw between Croatia and Belgium at the Ahmed bin Ali Stadium on Thursday was probably evidence in itself that what is possibly the best collection of individuals that either country will ever put together have been melted down and moulded into something quite different.
2018 was a high point for both. Belgium returned home to a hero’s welcome after finishing third in Russia; a tight 1-0 semi-final defeat to eventual winners France seen as the unfortunate reality of competing against the best teams in the world rather than a missed opportunity to reach a first-ever final.
There was however no significant sense of finality attached to the achievement. It was Roberto Martinez’s first tournament as manager, an ageing defence was not yet showing significant signs of decline, and brilliant individuals in Eden Hazard, Kevin de Bruyne and Romelu Lukaku were young enough and talented enough to continue to be the core of the team for years to come.
For Croatia, their 4-2 final defeat to the French was rightly heralded as a significant overachievement and a fitting end to the careers of several veteran figureheads within the squad. Eight of the XI who started the final at the Luzhniki Stadium were over the age of 28, and with arguably their two most important players in Luka Modric and Ivan Rakitic being the wrong side of 30, repeating such an achievement in the near future looked unlikely.
But the draw in Doha means that it is the veterans who got the better of the very experienced, with Croatia advancing to the Last 16 and Belgium going home. Even though Lukaku produced a series of increasingly unbelievable misses in the final half hour of the contest, Belgium’s performances across their three games in Qatar means that although this group of players deserved a better ending, the football they played did not.
Croatia manager Zlatko Dalic has both evolved and adapted his team since 2018. Modric, despite the endless march of time, is still of upmost importance in the centre of midfield, playing at least as well now, if not even better, than he ever has. Rakitic is no more, and the retirement of Mario Mandzukic means Croatia noticeably miss a focal point in attack, but a series of younger talents have been wedded with the old guard to create a cohesive whole.
20-year-old Josko Gvardiol has been one of the outstanding defensive performers at the tournament and Chelsea midfielder Mateo Kovacic is arguably more dynamic than predecessor Rakitic.
Modric is still magnificent in a way that neither statistics nor sometimes even your own eyes can comprehend, and Dalic’s team has been structured to accentuate his finest qualities. The midfield effectively thinks, moves and passes on the basis of the positioning of one another, never allowing a member of the Modric-Kovacic-Marcelo Brozovic to be without a man to shuttle the ball towards.
Martinez has not leant into the waning powers of some of his most influential players. He has tried to make the team play with a structure not detailed enough to produce the intricate football many of his squad have shown they are still capable of at club level, but also in a way that is too restrictive to allow them to use their supreme individual talent to solve problems by their own accord.
The Belgians lacked any form of attacking threat throughout the entire tournament until Lukaku was brought on for the second half of their final game. The fashioning of those almost unmissable chances for the Inter Milan striker showed this Belgian side has not been drained of all of its talent by the passing of the years, but had Lukaku taken one and Belgium escaped Group F, it would not have been a fair reflection of where the team are currently at.
In De Bruyne and Thibaut Courtois, Martinez had two of what are currently the best players in the world in their position at his disposal. But the rest of the team’s spine is either old, injured or creaking. Finding regular minutes for Wout Faes, Youri Tielemans and Leandro Trossard would have surely gone some way to providing an elixir of life for the ageing legs of Axel Witsel or the stiff turning circles of Jan Vertonghen and Toby Alderweireld.
There will now be considerable consternation about where it all went wrong for Belgium’s golden generation, but their performance in Russia was arguably success in itself – it was certainly celebrated at the time as such.
But there was still enough treasure among the ruins four years later for them to achieve something at this World Cup. Where this team and several of its very senior players go from here is uncertain, although it is probably for the best that there will be a new manager to help them work it out.
