Re: The Belgium thread
This is an answer to your question ss4_goku, i posted this in 2013 in the blog section of this forum.
At the beginning of my article, i talked about a youth team with Januzaj. Meanwhile Jason Denayer, Leander Dendoncker and Youri Tielemans all were in the squad against France and Denayer was even a starter.
With a 1-2 win in Croatia, the Belgium national team qualified mathematically for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. This litle country is in total euphoria. The Sunday after the qualification match 5000 fans were present for a training session in a torrential downpour, a further 85.000 followed the training session on Youtube. And this for a team that less than 5 years ago played home matches for less than 7000 fans. A team that played an away match against Finland and that wasn’t accompanied by a single fan…For their recent away match in Scotland, the Red Devils were accompanied by 10.000 fans. This is totally insane.
And the expecatations, are they high ? Who knows. The Belgian FA and coach Wilmots will be happy with a quarter final place in Brazil. This team might do better at the Euro’s in France and perhaps also in Russia in 2018. But the people who follow football expect most of the 2022 World Cup in the desert. Wait a minute, will the current team not be too old by then ? Yes. But there is a golden generation coming. The true golden generation.
In 2022 Belgium might start the WC with the following team: Alexandro Craninx (GK Real Madrid, currently 17 years old) – Leander Dendoncker (CB Anderlecht – 18) – Jason Denayer (CB Manchester City 18) – Mathias Bossaerts (CB – Manchester City 16) – Adnan Januzaj (SMF – Manchester United 18) – Charlie Musonda Jr (CM – Chelsea 16) Youri Tielemans (CM Anderlecht 16) – Andreas Pereira (SMF – Manchester United 17) – Divock Origi (Winger Lille 18) – Siebe Schrijvers (CF Racing Genk 17) – Zakaria Bakkali (Winger PSV 17).
Former football player, coach, pundit and youth specialist Johan Boskamp is following this team for some years now and has constantly been calling them, “the best football team in the world”. An exageration out of some misplaced chauvinism ? Johan Boskamp is not a Belgian, he is Dutch (traditionally our biggest rivals). And it seems that talent scouts from around the world certainly don’t disagree with Boskamp. Look at the teams were those young lads ply their trade. And then there is also the Anderlecht youth team from the same age that outclassed every other club team in the prestigious Viareggio Tournament, with players like Sammy Bourard and Nabil Jaadi. All those players are born in 1995 or 1996. Is this a coïncidence ?
No. This is Vision 200 delivering results.
It all started among youth coaches on a brainstorm weekend in 1999. Those Youth coaches were very pessimistic about the short term expecations foor Belgian youth development and were thinking about a long term action plan that aimed to do something with the talent that had to be present. This was the birth of Vision 2000, a new vision about youth education in Belgian football. Those youth coaches looked at what happened in Belgium’s neighbouring countries: Holland, Germany and France. They decided to mix the analytical way of doing things that was used in France and Germany, with the spontaneïty that rules in Holland. Vision 2000’s basical principles are rather simple:it’s all about aiming to make things as hard as possible for the young football talents and about playing a 4-3-3 formation.
That 4-3-3 formation is used by all Belgian youth selections an this not because the coaches are necessarily convinced that tactically this is the best possible formation, but because this formation is the most demanding for young players. Young players who constantly play 4-3-3 become complete football players and this formation is also ideal to learn as much as possible. It is no coïncidence that Wilmots’s favourite formation with the senior team is also 4-3-3. A 4-3-3 where AMF Kevin De Bruyne plays as a right winger. The left winger of that formation is Eden Hazard whose favourite position is AMF, left back Jan Vertonghen is a CB and DMF Axel Witsel was once a SMF or an AMF. Young Belgian football players seem to be very versatile… The reason for all this is Vision 2000 and the focus on 4-3-3.
Vision 2000 is not about results. Belgian youth teams prefer to play ‘good football’ to winning. The paradox is, that they end up winning after all. The 4-3-3 formation and the way it is learned to those young players guarantees technical and skilled build-up from the back, high pressing and lots of one-on-one situations. The fact that coaches adapt a playing style that results in lots of one-on-one sitautions means that players have to take important decisions from a very young age and that, consequently, they are not afraid of making actions that might result in the loss of the ball. That is also the reason why loosing is not seen as a big problem. The objective is always long term.
Another of the main principles of Vision 2000 is the fact that Belgian youth teams are aspiring as much possession as possible. This is a very un-Belgian thing to do, our last succes team played counter football and since then all Belgian teams played from an underdog position: counter football and a very defensive use of the off-side trap, and this even at grass roots level. Vision 2000 stopped all this defensive nonsense. It is ridiculous to learn the off-side trap to a six year old kid. The aim of football is that kids amuse themselves. Very young football players amuse themselves most by trying to be skillfull, not by running miles and miles or by learning how to use the off-side trap in the most succesfull way. Coïncidentally the best players are also the ones with skills, the ones who have learned to take decisions and who are used to play one-on-ones… Possession is important because young players only learn football skills in match situations if they have lots of ball possession.
And what about the results? Does the Belgian youth selections win ? Not always. Last year the Belgian U-17’s lost 2-1 to Spain, but afterwards the Spanish coach admitted that Spain were lucky and that his team never played against a better team. Football is about winning, but afterwards the Spanish FA asked the Belgian staff if they could come to Madrid and explain Vision 2000. A couple of weeks ago the U-16 side beat Germany 4-1. The second match was lost 1-0, but the German coach conceded afterwards that his team had adapted totally to the Belgian way of playing and that this was the first time he did this. He also admitted that the best team had lost and was very curious about Vision 2000.
Is this all the result of Vision 2000 ? We might never know, but how is it possible that suddenly the Belgian youth teams start to win and that half the world of youth football is interested in Vision 2000 ? It might all be coïncidental, but that seems very unlikely.
And then there are the youth academies. Belgian clubs still are among the minnows in Europe, but they are among the financial high flyers of the continent. In the period of 2010-2013, the Belgian clubs are doing very well with transfers. The club with best transfer ratio (who won the most money with transfers) was AC Milan, Spurs were second (Gareth Bale), but Genk, Standard and Anderlecht were 4th, 5th and 6th. Not bad for a litle country of scarcely 10 million inhabitants. Genk, Anderlecht and Standard have understood that they don’t have the money to buy first class foreign players. In the 70’s world class players like Rensenbrink, Haan, Lubanski, Lato and Preben Elkjaer Larsen played in Belgium. Now a club like Anderlecht buys very young players like Biglia or (their new Serbian CF) Mitrovic, hoping that they will develop and become better in order to sell them with a large profit. Most Belgian clubs can only buy third rate foreign players. The number of French players that come from a level beneath league 2 is astonishing. Now and then there is a hidden gem like Delaplace, but after one good season with Zulte-Waregem, Delaplace is once again playing in France, albeit this time in Ligue 1for Lille.
If you can’t buy good foreign players, and you don’t want to waste money on relatively expensive third rate foreigners, there is only one alternative: youth academies. Standard, Genk and Anderlecht have understood this 10 years ago and have been very succesfull because of their youth academies. One only has to look at the names that came from those academies Kompany (Anderlecht), Witsel, Mirallas, Carcela, Fellaini (Standard) and Defour, Benteke, De Bruyne and Courtois (Genk). Clubs are starting to realize that giving youth players first team opportunities might be the shortest way to financial wealth or at least financial break even. A club like Racing Genk has earned more than 30 million euro two seasons ago. For a Belgian club this is a massive amount of money and who knows what it might be worth if Financial Fair Play ever really takes off. And this isn’t the end, all the above mentioned players are not one-offs. Currently foreign scouts go to Standard matches for forwards Batshuayi and Ezekiel, to Genk for Sieben Schrijvers and to Anderlecht for Dendoncker, Tielemans, Bourard and Jaabi.
If teams earn lots of money for youth products, that means that the next generation will also play for the first team (17 year old Youri Tielemans is currently the leader of the new Anderlecht team after they sold Mbokani, Biglia and Jovanovic) and this in turn will attract other youth players. Ten years ago players went to clubs like Lille, Ajax and PSV at the very young age of 11 or 12 years old (Hazard, Mirallas, Vertonghen, Vermaelen, Dembele), ten years ago Anderlecht dumped a player like Dries Mertens. Now those young talented players stay with Belgian clubs, play one or two seasons for the first team and then go to big foreign clubs.
The last factor that has helped to develop all these extraordinary young talents is the fact that Belgian football finally succeded in seducing players from foreign origin who were born and raised in Belgian. Countries like France and Netherlands have multi-ethnic national teams for ages, in Belgium this is something relatively new. Lukaku and Kompany have Congolese roots, Witsel has a mother from La Réunion, Fellaini has Moroccan parents, Dembélé’s father is from Mali and Mirallas’ father is from Spain. Zakkaria Bakkali has Moroccan parents but choose to play for Belgian. And we all know everything about Janzaj’s origins.
So the 2022 WC is guaranteed and it nothing can go wrong ?
Of course things can go pearshaped. Players like Januzaj, Fereira, Musonda Jr. and others can choose to play for other countries. Sieben Schrijvers is a centre forward who is lightning quick, technically highly skilled and has lots of scoring abilities, but he is perhaps too small to be a world class centre forward. Can all those players really break into the first team of all those big clubs ? One can cast doubts about this. And it also seems that the real golden generation, the kids who were born in 1995 and 1996, still has to develop a real team ethos where the focus is on the collective and not on the individuals.
Will Belgium win the 2022 WC ? Probably not and frankly, who cares… the important thing is that Belgian coaches have developed a vision that might help other countries too (England anyone ? Maybe the English FA might ask about Vision 2000 instead of hoping that Januzaj will wait 5 years before playing international football for England).
The important thing is that now the Belgian FA is supporting grass roots talent.
