Beforehand, some young Devils dreamed of the very highest, national coach Jacky Mathijssen was more modest and wanted to win another European Championship match after 16 years.
The sobering conclusion is that even the latter did not succeed for the Belgian promises.
“And so you can certainly speak of a great disappointment,” said our commentator Stef Wijnants, who saw the problem especially in the front.
“The word that sums up this European Championship for me is inefficiency. Our attacking talents that came down from the A-team have not been able to lift us to a higher level. On the contrary.”
Wijnants can only point out that the return of Charles De Ketelaere and Loïs Openda was far too low.
“De Ketelaere was far too little decisive with the ball”, he saw. “I even thought he was getting less and less throughout the tournament. He played quite a good match against the Netherlands, but he failed to grab his moment against Georgia and it was also not enough against Portugal.”
Strangely enough, Openda also did not find the way to goal during this European Championship.
“You couldn’t blame him for a lack of effort – he worked very hard. Only there were also many bad passes and checks. Plus the missed opportunity against the Netherlands and certainly the one against Portugal yesterday … As a top striker you just have to finish it.”
“Maybe we focused a little too much on those guys from the A-team. With them we would manage, we thought. But our key players in the front turned out not to be in shape, Balikwisha was perhaps the best. limited the alternatives.”
Partly for that reason, Wijnants believes that national coach Jacky Mathijssen was not to blame for this tournament.
“You couldn’t fault his line-ups much”, our commentator judges. “Moreover, Mathijssen made good adjustments against the Netherlands. And in the end, the game delivered was far from bad, but the Devils simply did not take their moments in all group matches. As a result, they brought this disaster upon themselves.”
Of course, the race management didn’t help either. The arbitration fell through the basket several times at this European Championship for promises and the Belgians also felt cheated.
Against Georgia there was an obvious non-whistled penalty on Balikwisha, yesterday you could discuss the penalty phase with Debast.
Wijnants was also annoyed: “I hope it is a lesson for UEFA. If you broadcast this tournament internationally and want it to have value, you can no longer do without the VAR. Crucial and major mistakes have been made that could have been prevented can be done with a videoref.”
2023-06-28 04:42:37
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