This is the second of a six-part series looking at figures who have played a pivotal role in a modern football success story. The first piece, on the rebuilding of Ajax, can be found here. Each article comes with a related podcast, which can be found here on The Athletic FC Tactics Podcast feed.
For one of the key architects of Belgium’s golden generation, his aim was simple — “I want to teach the most difficult football.”
Bob Browaeys sits back in his chair at the Belgian FA’s base in Tubize, just south of Brussels. The 56-year-old coach is affable, a former goalkeeper with huge hands and a propensity to push his seat away from the table in excitement when he talks.
This is a space-age facility — underlighting in the boardrooms, 11 first-grade pitches, and the literal footprints of the country’s former greats leading towards its doors.
And in many ways, it is the house that Bob built — he is one of a small group of executives and coaches at the Belgian FA who took a nation with a population of less than 12million (London and New York City alone, for comparison, are home to approaching 9m people each) from 71st in FIFA’s men’s world rankings to first in less than a decade, paving the way for the Tubize facility’s redevelopment.
The key was producing a fearless collective of players — at odds with the previous century of football in Belgium.
“So, what is the most difficult football?,” Browaeys begins. “I’d try to explain to my players, we are going for 100 per cent possession. We play against Spain and their technical ability? We want the ball. We play against the strength of England? We want the ball. It’s easier to learn defensive tactics, but to be skilful on the ball? That’s the key.
“So we’d always try to play out through high pressure. We’d ask our four defenders to dribble, to get into the box at the right moment, to overload the midfield. We wanted initiative — this is the most difficult football.
“But then we need to create an environment where players can develop themselves and where they are able to make mistakes. Players can only improve when they’re allowed to fail. If a player is afraid to make mistakes, they’ll make more of them. A mistake is an important step in their progression.”
Bob Browaeys with the Belgium Under-17s team in 2022 (Nikola Krstic/Belga Mag/AFP/Getty Images)
Belgian football had already made its share of mistakes.
This millennium began in ignominy — the national team depressingly exited a home European Championship (co-hosted with the Netherlands) in 2000 after the group stage. Two years earlier, at the World Cup in France, they had also been knocked out at the first hurdle after three successive draws.
Browaeys had arrived in 1999, and in the years since has coached Belgium’s teams at the under-15s, under-16s and under-17s levels, as well as serving as technical director of the national football federation. Back then, the Belgian game felt like it was in a rut. Browaeys and his colleagues drew up their plans.
“When we analysed the way we played, we had the odd skilful or creative player — Luc Nilis, Marc Degryse — but only one or two,” Browaeys remembers. “The others were hard-working. We started with organisation, with a low block, but it clearly wasn’t working in tournaments.”
Belgium is relatively unique, split between the Dutch-speaking north (Flanders) and French-speaking south (Wallonia), regions with distinct cultural and social differences. The Belgian FA took inspiration from both — closely studying both the Cruyffian model of player development employed at Amsterdam’s Ajax and the French elite academy based at Clairefontaine.
Unlike these neighbouring nations, Belgium lacked a distinct footballing identity. But this was not an impediment to the men plotting its footballing future — they had a blank page to work with, not the burden of existing models and expectations.
“The starting point for us was not to become first in FIFA’s rankings,” says Browaeys. “It was to have a vision. In truth, we were a little jealous of the sophistication of the Netherlands’ and France’s youth development. So we asked how we could compete? And it came back to creativity.
“Football in the late 1990s and early 2000s had been more about tall guys, more like basketball players, but then there was a period of the return of the smaller players — like Lionel Messi, Xavi, Andres Iniesta. Also, it began to be about zonal football, rather than man-marking, so we decided to try and get ahead in developing intelligent players who could defend space. How could we get the brains into the muscles of the players?
“We decided we would try to target these skilful, small players — players strong in one-on-ones and the 4-3-3.”
There is an irony to producing creativity, which the Belgian coaches swiftly realised — to allow players the freedom to flourish, their teams had to be more structured and organised than ever, their vision built on certain non-negotiable principles.
The first of these was the 4-3-3 formation — its diamonds borrowed from Johan Cruyff, and their Dutch neighbours to the north. It was introduced across Belgium’s youth sides at every level.
“We wanted to develop wingers,” Browaeys explains. “In the past, we played with a sweeper, a libero, and man-marked across the board. There was just one wide player on each side, and so it was just running, running, running. But we wanted to have two players on the wing, a regular winger and wide No 8s, so that we had more variation. The 4-3-3 was the most logical. There’s a block of five more-defensive players, and five more-attacking players, who can play with offensive triangles.
“So then you come to the profiles — goalkeepers who can play out from the back, centre-backs who can penetrate with the ball when there is space, and wingers who are good in one-on-ones.”
Browaeys with Ruben Jongkind, left, Cruyff Football head of talent development in 2017 (Lynne Cameron/Getty Images for Soccerex)
To help make the system second nature, Browaeys and his colleagues also reformed game sizes at youth level across Belgium.
Previously, children played 11-a-side football from 10 years old onwards. But the FA coaches wanted to simplify things, focusing on the traits which really mattered for creativity — practising one-vs-ones and discovering diagonal passing lanes. In 2002, they settled on a three-stage progression — from five-a-side (a single diamond), to eight-a-side (a double-diamond), to the full 4-3-3 (adding an extra centre-back and wide attacking midfielders to the double-diamond).
“The pitches were too big,” says Browaeys. “And then before, we’d be playing with seven-a-side and nine-a-side. But with six outfield players, or eight outfield players, it is impossible to have diagonals — you place your players in two lines of three.
“So we wanted to introduce the diamond and double-diamonds — then there are one-vs-ones everywhere, from full-backs, to the wingers, to the midfield. You’re always under pressure. Everything started from this — to dribble past a player but then give a good pass.
“Then, later on, we would add the extra players to practise the infiltration of the diamonds by the centre-backs and midfield — so there would be a logical progression from five (a side), to eight, to 11 in the 4-3-3.”
Having placed players in the position to practise one-on-ones, this is where players were granted freedom — to try skills, to be unpredictable, to make mistakes. Coaches were asked to prioritise matchplay in small-sided games — developing players who excelled in one-on-one settings, such as, among many, Eden Hazard, Jeremy Doku and Leandro Trossard.
“What’s fun for a kid?,” asks Browaeys. “It’s scoring goals. So there’d be loads of scoring opportunities, three-on-twos, one-v-ones — we didn’t want exercises without goals, only with passing. And if you’re fantastic at passing when you’re eight years old, you will not dribble anymore. That’s not what we want. But at five or six years old, if you can dribble, then when you have space, have time to look around and pay attention to the space, it’s better.
“And so yes, creativity is still about making the right decision, but also giving them the right to get it wrong. I coached Jeremy Doku, a fantastic dribbler, but sometimes he’d make the wrong choice and try to dribble past four players. You can’t tell him, ‘Give the pass’ — watch the video, chat with him, and let him find the answer himself.”
Leandro Trossard was one of the Belgian talents who excelled in one-on-one settings (Julian Finney/Getty Images)
Creativity was not limited to the attacking players — but also applied to centre-backs, who were encouraged to burst forward into midfield, or beat their man before playing the pass. Risk-management could be developed later — the instinct could not. Defender Thomas Vermaelen was an early example of this — a player who the Belgian FA were happy to see at Ajax’s youth academy, with Dutch football further along in their player development at that moment.
To ensure their diamonds and coaching principles were installed across the nation, the Belgian FA focused on partnering with clubs and sports schools — massively increasing prospects’ exposure to these methods, even outside of national-team camps. One beneficiary of this was a young Thibaut Courtois.
“I have a clip of Courtois at 14 years old,” says Browaeys. “You would never say that he would become the best goalkeeper in the world — he’s practising, and there’s a lack of coordination with his right foot.
“He was the same age as Koen Casteels (the future Wolfsburg and Belgium goalkeeper), who was far taller, and seen as a far greater talent, because when you want to win games at under-15 or under-16 level, he would save all the balls that Courtois didn’t.
“But we’d recognised Courtois’ talent, and he was in our system of the top sports schools. It meant he had the time to develop, it meant he could double the hours he was practising — this is one of those clips, it’s just repetition, repetition.
“Today, in the Flemish part, we have five of these top sports schools, with 230 players involved. It was not our objective to develop the best goalkeeper in the world — but to develop players with talent, and get them to the highest level we could.”
Clubs were also allowed to develop their own projects, albeit with Belgian FA oversight. One of these was Anderlecht’s Purple Talent initiative — which brought through players such as Romelu Lukaku, Youri Tielemans and Doku. Lukaku’s father, Roger, was the first to suggest the idea to the Brussels club’s academy in 2007.
But all these ideas still took time to implement.
By 2007, seven years after the low point of Euro 2000, Belgium had dropped to 71st in the world rankings. Internally, however, there was confidence — rather than focusing on the performance of the senior team, Browaeys and his colleagues were encouraged by the emergence of several talented individuals.
Their squad for the 2008 Olympics included several players who would go on to be key figures over the coming years, including Vincent Kompany, Vermaelen (both 22 years old), Jan Vertonghen and Mousa Dembele (both 21) and Marouane Fellaini and Kevin Mirallas (both 20). Belgium got to the bronze-medal match in that tournament, but lost to Brazil.
“We also played in the semi-finals of the Under-17 European Championship in 2007 (losing to eventual winners Spain on penalties), with Eden Hazard, and we saw he was a very creative player. He later began to play together with Kevin De Bruyne, with Eden more on the left, Kevin more on the right.
“It was interesting, because they were both creative players, but in very different ways — one is creative at passing, the other is more creative when it comes to dribbling and counter-attacks. It showed the vision was working.”
Eden Hazard in 2008. One of the key components of Belgium’s ‘golden generation’ (Pascal Guyot/AFP via Getty Images)
That era of players — those born between 1986 and 1992 — also included the likes of Courtois, Toby Alderweireld and Axel Witsel. Lukaku was one year younger.
As these players matured, graduating into the senior national team, the media quickly began to refer to them as a golden generation. It could easily have been considered an irritating term at the Belgian FA, suggesting they were formed by fluke of birth, but the coaches relished what it showed about their talent development pathway.
“Belgium is a small country,” says Browaeys. “We cannot lose any talent. France, England, Germany? They have a lot of players, it doesn’t matter if they lose one. We cannot do that.”
This attitude was encapsulated by the pathway of Dries Mertens, a winger who became a Napoli favourite during the 2010s, and is still playing for Galatasaray in Turkey at age 38.
“Mertens was a late developer,” Browaeys says. “We could see he had the right skill profile, and he was in our very top sports school, but he was an incredibly late developer (physically). At 14 or 15, he was about 1.5m (4ft 11in) and 55kg (8st 9lb/121lb), playing against other early-maturing players who were 1.8m (5ft 11in) and 80kg (12st 8lb/176lb). It was such an unequal battle.
“He had been released by first-division clubs, and so he first played in the third division as an 18-year-old but with the body of a 15-year-old. Everybody was convinced by the player — he was so skilful, wow! — but we did not know if he would succeed as a professional footballer.
“So what I did was call him up to the under-17s, where we played Austria, a tall, big team. And Mertens did not touch the ball for the whole game. He was just not ready. Later, I tried to convince the other age-group coaches to call him up, to take the risk, but nobody would pick somebody who was still in the third division. But eventually he grew, made it into the second division, and then broke through with (Dutch club) PSV. By the time he was 24 years old, he was an international player for Belgium.
“After Mertens, we began to ask what we could do. In 2008, we started the Future Project, where we put all the late developers together.
“At 15, 16 years old, it is logical that you want to play with early-developing players who can help you win games. But the object of development is to create players for the future — so the Future Project was about preparing high-potential players who were very skilful, with the right decision-making, and allowing them to play together. Puberty was going to come — everybody becomes an adult.”
Dries Mertens in 2012 — he was small as a teenager and a very late developer (Dean Mouhtaropoulos/Getty Images)
Though Mertens inspired the project, its first official graduate was Yannick Carrasco, a fellow winger who has gone on to win 78 caps for Belgium and help Atletico Madrid win La Liga in Spain and the Europa League and reach a Champions League final. Its current poster child is 24-year-old Atalanta forward Charles De Ketelaere. He came through the youth programme at Club Brugge, who Browaeys compliments for their work with him.
At the Under-21 European Championship two years ago, five of Belgium’s starting XI were graduates of the Future Project. Four of those five players had advanced in their development to such a degree they had already made their debuts for the senior national team by the time of that tournament.
Belgium progressed gradually, and then suddenly.
Having been 71st in summer 2007, in six years they went from 66th to first in the world rankings, reaching that mark in late 2015 — a period which included victories over the Netherlands, France, and Italy. Arguably their finest win came in the quarter-finals of the 2018 World Cup, where they beat Brazil 2-1, before a 1-0 defeat to eventual champions France a round later.
A nation who had never won a major tournament — now with one of the most talented squads in the world game — sensed its chance.
Ultimately, that group didn’t ever reach a final, let alone win one — losing knockout-phase matches in heartbreaking fashion at the 2014 World Cup, Euro 2016, the 2018 World Cup and Euro 2020. After a group-stage exit from World Cup 2022, where a squad containing 11 players aged 30-plus won only one of their three games, they were beaten 1-0 by France in the round of 16 at the Euros last summer, though by then Belgium were no longer among the top tier of favourites.
Every tournament brought its small moment — Kompany’s pass against Argentina, set-piece defending against France, overconfidence in defeat to Wales.
This was a group of players with the talent to win trophies, but who, on the day, failed to perform to their potential.
Belgium fans in Antwerp watch their team beat Brazil in the 2018 World Cup quarter-finals (Jasper Juinen/Getty Images)
Belgium is not alone in this. The legendary Hungary squad of the 1950s never won a tournament, nor did the Dutch team of the 1970s, but both are listed among the greatest teams in history. But were the Belgians underachievers given the talent at their disposal, or overachievers given where they started?
Back at Tubize, Browaeys and the rest of the technical staff sat down after each tournament exit to analyse their development plans for the next cycle. That they remained so close to silverware was a sign of progress — Belgium had never previously been regular knockout contenders — but did they need to do things differently?
“You need to change the whole time,” says Browaeys. “You need to keep analysing what football at the highest level looks like, and also to be a visionary. Today, I’m working with the generation born in 2008, who are 16 or 17 years old. So we’re preparing them to be competitive in 2030, when they’re 22 years old — but how will football look in five years?
“We see matches are very high-intensity, with very skilful players, footballers who are no longer fixed in one position, and with a lot of overloads, but the overloads are always shifting from the wings to the centre. So it is crucial our talent-identification programme is based on the future game.”
De Ketelaere is a good example of the next generation of Belgian players.
Where once it developed players according to a fixed position in the preferred 4-3-3 setup, this urge to profile has been relaxed. Instead, versatility is prized — De Ketelaere can play across the front line, or as one of the two No 8s.
“We want three different types of midfield players, but for each to be versatile,” Browaeys says. “And to develop wingers who can both come inside and play in the hole spaces, and wingers that can go on the outside.”
Charles De Ketelaere’s versatility is a prized trait in contemporary football (Marco Bertorello / AFP)
He is also optimistic that Belgium’s previous golden generation will themselves turn into successful coaches.
Kompany, who has just led Bayern Munich to the Bundesliga title in his debut season, is the first example, but others are likely to follow. During his time managing the senior national team from 2016 to 2022, Roberto Martinez introduced a scheme where his players could actively pursue their coaching badges in coalition with the Belgian FA.
As that group now age out and retire, the senior team’s transition is beginning to take shape — highlighted by the likes of De Ketelaere, Doku, Aston Villa’s Amadou Onana (both 23), Romeo Lavia (21) of Chelsea and PSV’s Johan Bakayoko (22).
Younger still, two particular potential stars are currently in Brouwaey’s under-17s squad: Genk’s August De Wannemacker, a deep-lying playmaker, and centre-back Jorthy Mokio, who has already made his first-team debut, and scored his first senior goal, for Ajax.
The veteran coach continues to teach the most difficult football, diamond by diamond.
(Top photos: Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton)
