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One Player - Belgium

Rorschach said:
Belgium are the next European champions.
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Belgium could well win the next Euro's or even a future WorldCup, but they will never in the next 10 years have eleven players who individually will be top 5 in the world.

England for example will have a far better set of eleven individual players in any upcoming tournament
 
England will be lucky to qualify for the world cup. Wins over Moldova and San Marino aren't gonna cut it.
 
Neymar said:
Belgium could well win the next Euro's or even a future WorldCup, but they will never in the next 10 years have eleven players who individually will be top 5 in the world.

England for example will have a far better set of eleven individual players in any upcoming tournament
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Which teams in the world, apart from Spain and Germany perhaps, have 11 players who individually are in the top 5 in the world?
 
braineclipse said:
Which teams in the world, apart from Spain and Germany perhaps, have 11 players who individually are in the top 5 in the world?
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i meant that as a set of eleven individual players, England will have the better players (than Belgium). And that the 11 individuals that Belgium will have will not compare with any top 5 side.

Ill try illustrate my point.

Mingnolet/Courtouis
Vermaelen Vertonghen Kompany Gillet
Hazard Fellaini Dembele Witsel Defour
mirrallas lukaku benteke

Thats pretty much the core of the Belgian team for the next few years.
Even if you account for a number of them really excelling and fullfilling their potential it wont compare to England teams of the past few years (at least on an individual level), think Rio, cole, Terry, Lampard, Gerrard, Rooney etc - all of whom were seriously worldclass in their prime.
Just think about some of the fringe/squad players from England. I'm talking about the likes of Sturridge, Oxlade Chamberlain, Micah Richards, Kyle Walker, Welbeck, Jones, Gibbs, Rodwell etc. A number of these guys could start for Belgium and the others would be serious challengers to a starting 11 spot. And if these guys were Belgian, people would be putting them in the same category as the Lukakus, and raving over them too.

Also look at other teams. Italy, Portugal, Holland, Argentina, France etc all have young players of similar calibre.

In my opinion, the Belgian team could potentially reach the kind of level Portugal have reached in the past few years. But lets not kid ourselves. Just because Belgium have suddenly got a crop of kids who are of a really high standard not seen in the past few decades in Belgium, theres no reason to suggest they will become a top 5 international team.
 
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Neymar said:
i meant that as a set of eleven individual players, England will have the better players (than Belgium). And that the 11 individuals that Belgium will have will not compare with any top 5 side.

Ill try illustrate my point.

Mingnolet/Courtouis
Vermaelen Vertonghen Kompany Gillet
Hazard Fellaini Dembele Witsel Defour
mirrallas lukaku benteke

Thats pretty much the core of the Belgian team for the next few years.
Even if you account for a number of them really excelling and fullfilling their potential it wont compare to England teams of the past few years (at least on an individual level), think Rio, cole, Terry, Lampard, Gerrard, Rooney etc - all of whom were seriously worldclass in their prime.
Just think about some of the fringe/squad players from England. I'm talking about the likes of Sturridge, Oxlade Chamberlain, Micah Richards, Kyle Walker, Welbeck, Jones, Gibbs, Rodwell etc. A number of these guys could start for Belgium and the others would be serious challengers to a starting 11 spot. And if these guys were Belgian, people would be putting them in the same category as the Lukakus, and raving over them too.

Also look at other teams. Italy, Portugal, Holland, Argentina, France etc all have young players of similar calibre.

In my opinion, the Belgian team could potentially reach the kind of level Portugal have reached in the past few years. But lets not kid ourselves. Just because Belgium have suddenly got a crop of kids who are of a really high standard not seen in the past few decades in Belgium, theres no reason to suggest they will become a top 5 international team.
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Most the squad players from England you've picked are full backs apart from Rodwell it seems. I'm assuming you're not saying that Micah Richards or Phil Jones would start ahead of Vertonghen or Kompany. Yes, most national teams have their weak spots, apart from Spain and Germany you can probably find flaws in any of the good teams where several players from worse teams would be starting. That's normal. I think you could list a couple of squad players from Belgium that would seriously be in contention in the England squad too.

I have no idea where you imagine Rodwell starting for them though. Sturridge ahead of Lukaku or Benteke? I don't see it mate. Oxlade Chamberlain? Really? At this point? Ahead of Hazard or Mirallas? Wowsa. All of the English world class players are past their prime or out of contention already, but you were talking about future upcoming tournaments, I don't think Rio or Terry will make much of a difference.

I think Belgium could end up having 4-5 world class players in a couple of years in Courtouis, Kompany, Verthongen, Hazard and Lukaku at least. Time will tell of course, but that could be a significant force that could really get somewhere in an international tournament. Top 5 in the world, I'm not sure, but I don't think we'll consider England in there anytime soon either.

People are rating Belgian players because they have performed, not because of their nationality. The exact opposite argument could be made actually, if some of those Belgian players had been English I think they would have been rated even higher in England at least.
 
braineclipse,

i could definitely see sturridge start, either on the wing or as a striker. if belgium want to go 4-4-2, they may not want to go 2 target men.

re mirrallas vs. oxlade-chamberlain, i guess this will vary person to person. but lets not forget oxlade chamberlain started a number of games for england in the euros. i highly doubt anyone would have thought mirrallas was good enough to start for england so far from what we've seen in his career.

both Richards and Jones would start instead of gillet at right back for me.

belgium could well end up having 5 worldclass players (bearing in mind people's definition of worldclass isnt the same). but so could england. lets not forget i didnt name someone like Wheelchair because he is already an established english player.

theres no doubting some of the belgian players have performed. esp the likes of lukaku, benteke, hazard etc (to a very very high level). and i would agree they are rated highly based on performances. but, i would look at someone like mirrallas, and say hes being grouped with some of the aforementioned players simply because he is belgian. if i take him as a right winger (in the epl), i would say the people like sturridge, pienaar, lennon, young, sinclair, hoilett, gervinho, n'zogbia have all put in a similar level of performance to mirrallas at some stage in the past year. but because mirrallas is belgian, he is getting grouped with the likes of dembele, benteke etc.
 
Very few people I have seen have said that Mirallas is as good as Lukaku or Hazard, or at least not as big a talent as those two.

Arguing over Mirallas and Oxlade-Chamberlain gets us nowhere. Especially if you're saying he's comparable to N'Zogbia, Hoilett and Gervinho.

I don't know much about Gillet, but I thought Alderweireld was their right back these days and fairly highly rated.

You said that England will have a far better starting 11, I disagree.

If a combined best 11 was to be made of the two squads, how many of them do you think would be Belgian and/or at a same level so it wouldn't matter?
 
hart
cole, kompany, rio/vertonghen, johnson
carrick, gerrard
walcott, hazard, Wheelchair
rooney

that would be my current 11 if they were playing today. but i do accept the belgian team is currently a lot younger at the moment, so its not entirely "fair" to compare the current line ups
 
also i didnt mean that people were saying mirrallas is as good as hazard. but more that people were grouping mirrallas as "another good young belgian". which is true. but if any of the above mentioned young players were belgian, we'd be saying the same about them. but because they are english, for some reason we are forgetting that England have a decent crop of youngsters too.
 
Neymar said:
hart
cole, kompany, rio/vertonghen, johnson
carrick, gerrard
walcott, hazard, Wheelchair
rooney

that would be my current 11 if they were playing today. but i do accept the belgian team is currently a lot younger at the moment, so its not entirely "fair" to compare the current line ups
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You think Rio is better than Verthongen?

I think Lukaku in as a striker for Rooney to replace either Wheelchair or Walcott moving Hazard out to his normal wide role would make the team stronger.

And yes, age is an issue since we were talking about future tournaments.
 
yes, i think rio is better.
and theres no way Wheelchair or walcott is getting shifted for lukaku. those two, together with cazorla were the reason arsenal finished 4th.

when you asked for a combined 11, i assumed you meant current. but even if we were to pick say a u25 side, mine would look like this:
courtois,
walker, gibbs, vertonghen, jones/smalling,
fellaini, dembele
hazard, Wheelchair, walcott
any one of sturridge/lukaku/benteke

and the bench would be predominantly english too. with the likes of cleverley, chamberlain, jenkinson, welbeck, richards, caulker etc
 
combined 11 for me:

...........................Courtois........................
Alber.......Kompany.......Vertonghen....Cole
................Fellaini...........Dembele...............
Hazard...............Rooney................Miralles
..........................Lukaku.............................
 
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