48 questions, a 2026 World Cup Preview: Belgium

One question for each 2026 World Cup team. Is the Belgium Very Good Generation secretly as good as the Belgium Golden Generation?

Would you love me in a Bentley? Would you love me on a $95 bus from downtown Boston to Gillette Stadium? Footnote is asking 48 questions, and they’re all about the 48 teams at the 2026 World Cup. This post is part of our Group G preview. You can also read previews of Iran, Egypt, and New Zealand. 

Is the Belgium Very Good Generation secretly as good as the Belgium Golden Generation?

Belgium’s Golden Generation was over before it even had a chance to get started. 

In the early 2010s, a generation of absurdly talented players emerged from the Low Countries — but not the Low Country that traditionally produces absurdly talented players, which is the Netherlands.

Seemingly all at once, Belgium had an incredible team for once. In the lead up to the 2014 World Cup Eden Hazard, Kevin de Bruyne, Vincent Kompany, Dries Mertens, Toby Alderweireld, Jan Vertonghen, Mousa Dembele, and Marouane Fellaini¹Listen you might not want to hear it, but Fallaini was absolutely part of this group, and if you don’t want to believe me you should take it up with every single person who coached him at the club or international level between 2008 and 2019 and relied on him in every single big game of that period. were all around the same age and were all playing key roles for some of the best teams in Europe. Plus there was a slightly younger cohort joining, led by Romelu Lukaku and Thibault Courtois. 

Belgium in 2014 were the one of the most popular dark horse picks in the history of dark horse picks, to the point where they were probably just a normal colored horse. And things went okay, broadly speaking. The Red Devils won every game in their group, outlasted the United States in a round of 16 match they really should have won by several goals before it got to extra time, and then lost by just a solitary goal in a quarterfinal against Argentina. 

For a team that had failed to qualify for 2006 or 2010, this was a good first step, a sign of a new power emerging on the world stage.

But it never really happened. That generation’s crowning achievement was a third place finish at the 2018 World Cup, in which they were genuinely great, playing great football to comeback from 0-2 down against Japan and then summoning a gritty defensive performance in a quarterfinal victory over Brazil.

In their other major international tournaments, Belgium’s Golden Generation were upset by Wales in the quarterfinals of Euro 2016 and came up short at the same stage against Italy at Euro 2020. 

And just like that, the Golden Generation’s window was closed. By the time the Covid pandemic hit, Dembele and Fellaini had moved to China, and Kompany had retired. Hazard — who was so infamous for eating what he wanted and not taking his fitness as seriously as his football that the king of Belgium told him not to eat too many hamburgers on video — was more or less washed up by the time that he arrived at Real Madrid in 2019.

The remnants tried to get the gang back together for one more job in 2022, and it did not go well at all. An extremely lucky opening win against Canada papered over the cracks before a loss to Morocco put Belgium on the edge of elimination. The stakes convinced coach Roberto Martinez to play a half-fit Romelu Lukaku against Croatia, resulting in a surreal 10 minutes of shocking misses and a group stage elimination.

Belgium come into this World Cup possibly unburdened by the Golden Generation tag. From that cohort, only de Bruyne, Courtois, and Lukau remain. Although the generation coming in behind are not quite on the Hazard level, they may still form a solid new core. The biggest young star on the squad is Jeremy Doku, a supremely talented dribbler who has threatened to become one of the best players in the world at times if he could only shoot, and showed flashes of really being able to shoot in the back half of the season with Manchester City. Fellow winger and occasional striker Leandro Trossard was a supremely useful utility player for Arsenal this season, and Charles De Ketelaere has been excellent in Serie A for the past two seasons and is a huge asset for an international team in that he can play pretty much anywhere in attack.

Further back in the pitch Belgium’s midfield will likely be anchored by club teammates Youri Tielemans and Amadou Onana. Fresh off winning the Europa League together, Tielemans and Onana have fairly complimentary skillsets: Tielemans is a great ball mover and Onana is a great ball winner.

Ironically, however, Belgium’s first post-Golden Generation World Cup will likely be decided by how much the remnants of the Golden Generation can give this new core. De Bruyne is not the insane endurance athlete that he once was, but he is still one of the best in the planet at kicking a soccer ball, and got healthy just in time for the end of the Serie A season to play himself in shape for the tournament.

Courtois similarly seems to have returned from injury just in time for the World Cup. He remains one of the best goalkeepers in Europe, and also still looks a startling amount like a young Chris Noth, which means you can definitely make some strained Sex and the City jokes while you watch Belgium.

The biggest question mark is if Belgium are going to put Lukaku through the torture of 2022 again. Unlike his fellow veterans, Lukau did not round back into form at the end of the season. He has only played 70 minutes this year, and hasn’t appeared for Napoli since early March.

Yet the allure of a hypothetically healthy Lukaku might prove too strong for Rudi Garcia to resist, and Lukaku himself may be desperate for one more great World Cup moment after those misses in Qatar. 

Lukaku has become the subject of lots of internet jokes; that Croatia game wasn’t the first time he had a high-profile miss in a big game, and he was unlucky to have underwhelming spells at two Premier League clubs, where fans tend to be ruthless in their judgement on the internet. But his record with Belgium is impeccable: 89 goals in 124 appearances gives him a better international goals per game ratio than Cristiano Ronaldo. If by some chance he can be healthy by mid-June, he might be the missing piece for a roster that is notably missing any other traditional strikers.

After twelve years of near misses and false starts, a healthy Lukaku, an energized new core, and the freedom of new expectations might be able to generate an actual golden moment for Belgium, generations aside.