After guiding Belgium to the quarter-finals of the Euro 2016, skipper Eden Hazard has dubbed his performance in the side’s 4-0 win over Hungary as “best” in his worldwide career.
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Belgium will fancy their chances although Hazard admitted Wales, and their Real Madrid superstar Gareth Bale, could be complicated. We played against them in the qualifiers, they are a very tough team to play against. “They made the mistake of wanting to play against us”, Courtois said.
Meanwhile, Wales captain Ashley Williams will be fit to face Belgium in the Euro 2016 quarter-final on Friday.
Belgium now battle Wales in Lille, near the French-Belgian border, for a place in the semi-finals.
According to team-mate Axel Witsel, Hazard could eclipse his “difficult” season with Chelsea by taking Euro 2016 by storm.
Belgium coach Marc Wilmots has indicated he feels Kevin De Bruyne’s struggles at Euro 2016 are down to his move to Manchester City.
It was, for the next 35 minutes, a shoot-out between Belgium’s forwards and Kiraly, but for whom Hungary would have had little stake in second-half matters.
He began by surging past Hungary’s defense on the left side and sending over a low cross for substitute Michy Batshuayi to steer home in the 78th minute – just two minutes after coming on. “I told everyone to stay calm and told them to keep going because they were moving the ball very well”. At halftime I said we needed to be braver.
Hazard simply said “yes” when asked if Sunday had been his best ever performance for his country and instead paid tribute to an overall team performance. “We now want to work for World Cup qualifying and I think we can achieve great things”. While Germany had beaten Ukraine and Northern Ireland and drawn against Poland, Belgium had thumped Ireland 3-0 and edged Sweden 1-0, before losing to Italy 2-0.
Romelu Lukaku was proving a handful for the Hungary defence and a perfectly-weighted pass found the run of De Bruyne but he could not generate enough pace on his header and the chance went begging. “I know we had great difficulty to score against them but this time we’ll go for it”, Wilmots said.
The Hungarians had been playing some good football themselves without threatening much, but they did manage to carve out an opportunity on 24 minutes when Balazs Dzsudzsak got past his marker before forcing a save out of Thibaut Courtois from 20 yards out.
“I think we’re getting better now, improving with every game”.
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33 – @DeBruyneKev has been involved in 33 of the 100 global goals Belgium have scored under Marc Wilmots (13 goals, 20 assists). Key.
