Thomas Vermaelen, who will miss the quarter-final with Wales after being booked, reacted exceptionally to stop Adam Szalai heading in a Balazs Dzsudzsak cross and they came closer when Thibaut Courtois acrobatically saved a deflected drive from Adam Pinter. “I know we had great difficulty to score against them but this time we’ll go for it”, Wilmots said.
Advertisement
Wilmots said he told Hazard to do the talking with his boots. In the second half we killed off the match. “We’ve never played against such a good team”, he said.
Hazard, who has finally burst into life at the tournament after a disappointing club season with Chelsea, set up one goal as well as Toby Alderweireld, Michy Batshuayi and Yannick Carrasco completed a comfortable victory.
Hazard scored and contributed an assist in an excellent individual performance when Belgium crushed Hungary in Toulouse but picked up a quadriceps injury in the first half.
Some 25 000 England fans and 10 000 from Iceland were expected in the Mediterranean city where the stadium has a 35 000 capacity. It was only against Northern Ireland where they had to play a bit different game where you could see some of their weaknesses, but even then they didn’t give away a lot.
“He doesn’t talk much but he talks with his feet and that’s what he did today”.
Therefore Belgium’s golden generation appear to be on the verge of fulfilling their potential at a major worldwide tournament, particularly given the brilliant form of the mercurially talented Hazard and Kevin De Bruyne. We played against them in the qualifiers, they are a very tough team to play against.
Goal hero Griezmann said the dressing-room exchanges had been “stormy” but did the trick along with a tactical switch which saw him brought more into the centre of the field to tear into the Irish defence. 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.
Hazard did all the creative work for Batshuayi’s 78th-minute goal, which the substitute scored with his first touch after coming on. The Hungarian team had also some chances and would have deserved a goal. I was unmarked and all I had to do was stick it in the net.
Advertisement
“We put in a great effort, both defensively and going forward, but with all due respect to our opponents we can not say from this that we are going to dominate the competition”, said Loew. We can’t give our opponents any space in the next game and we have to take our chances as we won’t get as many. “Our thoughts go out to the family and friends of Erik and we will always carry him with us”, the Belgian FA said on its website.
