Thankfully, there were no beers thrown. But there were boos. Lots of them. And Kevin De Bruyne wasn’t having it. After leading his Belgium team-mates over to salute the majority of their compatriots congregated in the MHPArena in Stuttgart, De Bruyne was disgusted by their disapproval of the draw with Ukraine that had just secured qualification for the last 16 of Euro 2024.
So, he instructed his fellow players to turn their backs on the fans and return to the dressing room. It was a bold move from the captain, who is no stranger to controversy when it comes to the national team.
Indeed, with France now standing in the way of the last remaining members of Belgium’s ‘Golden Generation’ belatedly fulfilling their potential at international level, there’s a very real risk that De Bruyne’s career with his country will end in more bitterness and boos.
‘Too old’
De Bruyne prides himself on his honesty, but he’s well aware that his frankness upsets some people. “Everyone knows that I don’t beat around the bush,” he once admitted, “but any criticism I have is always with good intentions, to help everyone do better.”
However, it was hard to understand the thinking behind De Bruyne’s decision to drop a devastating truth bomb on Belgium just before the start of their 2022 World Cup campaign. When asked in an interview with The Guardian whether his nation could win the tournament, the attacking midfielder replied, “No chance, we’re too old… I think our chance was 2018. We have a good team, but it is ageing. We lost some key players.
“We have some good new players coming, but they are not at the level other players were in 2018. I see us more as outsiders.”
Divides the dressing room
De Bruyne was right, of course. Belgium didn’t even make it out of the group stage in Qatar, but his pre-tournament appraisal felt like a self-fulfilling prophesy, as if the Red Devils weren’t good enough because De Bruyne said they wouldn’t be.
Roberto Martinez’s’ men probably would have struggled anyway, but De Bruyne’s scathing assessment of the strength of the squad hardly helped bring the players together; on the contrary, it rather inevitably divided the dressing room. There were even reports of several players, including De Bruyne, almost coming to blows after the 2-0 loss to Morocco on matchday one.
Speaking immediately the game, veteran defender Jan Vertonghen had even sarcastically stated, “I guess we attack badly because we are also too old up front too…”
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‘Never been so happy’
So acrimonious was the fallout from Belgium’s first-round elimination that there was even talk of De Bruyne calling time on his international career. Eden Hazard quit immediately after Qatar, while Toby Alderweireld also walked away, but De Bruyne says he never thought about following suit, “not even for a second, actually”.
Martinez’s successor, Domenico Tedesco, played a part in convincing De Bruyne to continue by not only making him captain but also rejuvenating the squad. Consequently, the first international meet-up after the World Cup felt like “an introduction new class-mates at a new school” for De Bruyne, who was enthused by the “energy” in the group.
“It’s still been a shock because half of the usual squad is no longer there,” he said last year. “But it feels fresh. The newcomers want their chance as we used to want our chances.”
The Manchester City star ended up missing the majority of the qualification campaign through injury, as well as the March internationals, but when he scored in the friendly win over Montenegro at the start of the month, De Bruyne’s demeanour couldn’t have been more positive.
“Everybody says that he’s never been so happy, so positive, and I think you can feel that,” Tedesco enthused only last week. “It’s important that we get the lads onto the pitch in that kind of mood.”
It’s fair to say, though, that the mood of the fans has since become an even bigger talking point.
‘Need the fans to stay with us’
After the shock loss to Slovakia on matchday one,De Bruyne played a big part in getting Belgium back on track by netting in the subsequent 2-0 win over Romania. Qualification for the last 16 was back in their hands and top spot in a weak Group E was also there for taking.
However, when Belgium won a corner in injury time in their 0-0 draw with Ukraine, De Bruyne elected to call Johan Bakayoko over to help him time-waste, rather than swinging the ball into the box in the hope of forcing a late winner. As it turned out, the fans were appalled by such a lack of ambition and they made their feelings known at the full-time whistle.
First, they booed the entire team. Then they booed De Bruyne when he was announced as the Player of the Match.
“We tried to win the match,” De Bruyne insisted in his post-match press conference. “We had goal-scoring opportunities, but we didn’t take any risks with the corner because we knew we might concede a goal.
“If that happens, you’re out of the Euros. It’s a shame we didn’t manage to score before – we had opportunities – and after that we just need the fans to stay with us. We need these fans. We’ll need them against France. That’s all I have to say.” For now, at least.
‘No filter’
Thomas Meunier is among those to have come out in support of De Bruyne’s stance towards the supporters. “The advantage of Kevin is that he has no filter,” the veteran Belgium defender told reporters. “He says what he thinks and I love such people. When he made the decision to go inside, the players followed. It was the right decision.
“The reaction from the fans and the analysts was disproportionate because, at the end of the day, we qualified. It’s not like we were last in the group. We did our job. Okay, maybe we could have done it a bit better but we are at a European Championship, you cannot win every game 3-0, 4-0. We got what we wanted and that’s the most important.
“We also wanted to greet the fans, but the problem started when they were whistling at Romelu [Lukaku]. Nobody understood that; you don’t whistle out your record international (scorer).”
As Amadou Onana and others pointed out, booing players never helps restore confidence or improve performance. Of course, the counter-argument is that while the show of frustration with the misfiring forward was hardly helpful, it was perfectly understandable.
Now or never
Even De Bruyne himself looked utterly bewildered as Lukaku wasted a glorious through-ball in the 0-0 draw with Ukraine, and it’s easy to argue that one of the game’s great playmakers has been repeatedly let down by his colleagues.
However, De Bruyne has also disappointed in big games for Belgium over the years and, in Qatar, he was not just a victim of Belgium’s breakdown, but a contributing factor. What’s more, this is his team now and the onus is, therefore, on the captain to step up to the mark against France and repair Belgium’s broken bond with their supporters.
Because this feels like now or never for De Bruyne and Belgium. And they all know it too. De Bruyne is 33; another World Cup is probably beyond him. This is most likely his last chance to lift a trophy with his national team – and to do it he’s going to need all the help he can get, on and off the field.
Consequently, it came as no surprise to see him strike an uncharacteristically diplomatic tone in his post-match interviews last week, with De Bruyne simply stating over and over again that the team needs the fans fully behind them in Dusseldorf, rather than taking another shot at the supporters.
Ultimately, though, everything will hinge on whether Belgium play with the level of ambition that the supporters expect of such a gifted group of players. If they don’t, if yet another tournament ends in a meek exit, this could all turn toxic, and the abiding memory of De Bruyne’s time in the international arena will be the absurd sight and sound of a Player of the Match winner being booed by his own team’s fans.
