With the World Cup opening ceremony just 6 hours away, Live4Liverpool are taking a stab at predicting how each of the countries containing Liverpool players will perform during the World Cup.
Each hour from now until the opening ceremony, we’ll publish a post of all 6 nations at the World Cup that a lucky enough to have a Red in their side, beginning with Belgium:
While many consider Simon Mignolet’s Belgium to be a true ‘dark horse’, there seems to be little basis other than the Belgians have a great many talented, young players. With the likes of Hazard, Lukaku, Courtois and Kompany, the Belgians have the spine of an incredible team but each big test they’ve faced they have seriously fallen on their faces.
Their last 6 results since the final World Cup qualification match has included 3 wins, 2 defeats and a draw. They could even be given the tag ‘flat-track bullies’, given that they always seem to punish the weaker sides but fail in the bigger tests. For instance, the 2 defeats in their past six have come against the harder opposition: Colombia and Japan.
Going back over the past 2 years, Belgium’s biggest internationals have been against France, England and their neighbours, the Netherlands, and they won one, drew one and lost one – not exactly the kind of form you’d put down to potential World Champions.
While not yet quite the ‘hipster’s choice’, the Belgian’s have been huge favourites at the bookies and there is no doubt that with the quality they have at their disposal, they could certainly cause a few upsets but without a proven track-record, I believe they will struggle to exit a group that contains Russia, Algeria and South Korea.
Prediction: Knocked out at group stage
who cares? why do we spend so much time talking about other countries and their players? we need to concentrate on england and english players. how much column inches do we give to the likes of messi and ronaldo in this country? messi plays for the argies and ronaldo for portugal. i couldn’t give a tinker’s cuss what they do at the world cup as long as neither get their hands on the trophy
Though this was about Liverpool players playing in the World Cup. Wasn’t aware Messi or Ronldo played for us!
If you’d waited about an hour stevie, there’s the main post about England coming up.
Nothing quite like jumping the gun though.
Belgium didn’t lose a single match in the WC qualification… colombia and japan defeat (which they dominated) were friendly just after the qualification while players had important matches with club, so they pretty much played while walking.