After losing the most crucial match of the year against a surprising Wales, manager Marc Wilmots wanted to congratulate their rivals and confirm that his team did everything right. It really was Wales' great performance the reason why they weren't able to get that victory. This coach has always been a very good strategist, his tactical approach for this match was nearly flawless but Wales just had a better one.
After the match, he made an analysis of the result: "We had a good strategy, we dominated, had an excellent 25 minutes but from nowhere we dropped 15 meters back. I was waving my arms, shouting. I'm not a magician. You can't simply replace experience and my defense had an average of 23 years old. I can't blame the players but they need to be a well-oiled machine. We had to replace 50 percent of our backline, I can understand us conceding goals from set-pieces. Perhaps it was fear because they are young. I don't know. But I'm in charge of the team and that's the best I thought we had.”
Wilmots also said how important it was for Belgium to trust their young talent: "We had the core of the team and took the risk to bring in young players - they have a lot of potential, I'm not going to kill them. We were listed among the teams who could have gone all the way. We wanted to go further and of course, the players are left with a bad taste. We made too many mistakes to win this match against a very good Wales side – they know how to play football and have good talent."
Photo credit: Belgian Red Devils