Belgium – Italy 0-2. What looks like a fine win for Italy was in reality a 90 minutes embarrassment for Wilmots’ team.

Italian coach Conté had plenty time to work out a plan how to stop Hazard, De Bruyne and Carrasco from dominating a less talented Italy in the first round of EURO 2016 in France. Belgium, currently captained by Eden Hazard, finds themselves in a situation where the squad has more talent than the Italian one, a situation which hasn’t occurred for many years.

Italian Coach antonio conté already had Wilmots in his pocket even before the gaem started.

But how did Belgium end up being humiliated in the game?

Antonio Conté was aware that Wilmots likes to adapt his team in favor of the strengths of opposing teams. Therefore he decided to leak his 3-5-3-2 formation with 2 full backs.

Being afraid of this setup, Wilmots decided to trow in 3 defensive midfielders. Choosing Witsel and Fellaini above technically superior players like Carrasco, Mertens, Origi or Batshuayi.

After 5 minutes everything was clear already, Italy had Belgian’s main actors tactically locked and pushed them to play the balls via the defensive midfielders who lost balls at a dramatic rate. Hazard got 2-3 players glued on him and the presence of Fellaini running in the box caused the Belgian players to trow easy high balls that never got anyway néar the head of a Belgian team member.

Eden Hazard struggled as he had to face 2-3 opponents throughout the game.

With half the players rushing out on counter attack, Italy was simply waiting to kill the game.

Wilmots looked and could not think of a single action to counteract Conté’s master plan. When the game was almost over, the Belgian coach finally decided to bring in the already planned-for substitutes Mertens, Carrasco and Origi. Far too late because the game was played. Conté was already thinking about his next game versus Sweden.

All players except Courtois had an awful night to forget. And Wilmots not only got his ass handed over, he also got confronted with a dilemma; a dilemma which only seem to appear hard for him but easy for everyone else: play football or keep demonstrating an ugly and slow version of useless short passes (Witsel, Fellaini) and useless high balls (to Fellanin). If Wilmots decides to stick with the last option, Euro 2016 will end in the first or second round, and leaves international stars like Hazard, Lukaku and playmaker De Bruyne behind with a large disappointment. Needless to say the coach will not survive this Euro 2016 failure, should the wrong choices be made.

Kevin De Bruyne looks dejected after Italy’s goal.

But not only the players where largely disappointed. The disappointment in the home country was enormous, with 2 million people watching (a record) which went home with nothing but questions about  how it was even póssible to play so bad with the golden generation of football players Belgium has at its disposal.

Any solutions?

Yes, but the players will have to decide what they want: Modern European style of football or kick and rush style of football.
In his role of captain, Hazard and his luitenants De Bruyne and Vertonghen will have to step up and confront the coach about the way of playing.

Chances are high Wilmots will start want to again with box-to-box player Fellaini against Ireland resulting in this kind of football:

Embarrassing high-balls-to-Fellaini-football could lead to fast exit from Euro 2016 for the Belgian Team.

A serious lack of tactical insight from the Belgian coach has lead to a 2-0 defeat and could send captain Hazard and his team straight home after 2 weeks.

Should Fellaini, nor Witsel be left out of the team, the team will need to act as a whole, apply it’s own corrections  and simply ignore mostly Fellaini’s game play. They need to agree to ignore his forward runs and decide not to give up the technical passing game for him. Sending high balls in the box will not get Belgium past Ireland. Sending useless passes to Witsel also is merely a waste of precious time.

Wilmots’ decision to play high balls to Fellaini wrecked the already difficult Belgian game completely.

Fellaini’s box-to-box game play combined with high balls is a complete NO GO for any every technical proficient team in EURO 2016. Ireland’s coach will be praising the strength of Fellaini, in order to get him in the starting eleven and weaken the footballing skills by 30%.

Expectation for the game versus Ireland?

Expectations are that Wilmots will continue to ignore the shouting for better players and want to prove his critics wrong by perhaps just changing Nainggolan and Lukaku for Mertens and Origi, 2 players he blames for the defeat.

The Belgian team will need to act as a whole, and simply IGNORE Fellaini’s game play when selected by the coach. Throwing high balls at him will not get Belgium further than round 2 at EURO 2016

Yannick Carrasco was the best in the champions League final, but left out of the starting eleven for reasons of incompetence.

Belgium -Sweden might be a battle on life or death in order to not be one of the 6 (!) Teams that will go home after round one. For Belgium, currently number 2 on the current FIFA rankin it would be an embarrassment they and captain Hazard cannot afford.

Conté and Italy in the mean time are fine tuning their tactics on how to silence Ibrahimovic from touching the ball more than 10 times. No doubt he will succeed .

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