So Wilmots has said that we have done very well the past four years and right now quitting the job is not on his mind.
And just now the Belgian FA have released a statement they won't fire him at this time.
Its a team sport. The end.
When have Belgium ever been a team?
Golden generation?
Overrated.
It's funny (or sad) but 'being a team' has always been our thing in the past. Granted, we've never had a group as talented as this one, and we like to be the underdog, but this is probably the first time we've had this problem.
Look, it's pretty clear Wilmots should have never been appointed as manager. Everyone knew the kind of talent we had on the way, you don't hand over the reigns to a guy with almost no managerial experience (he managed St-Truiden for a while in late 2004, a club usually found in the right column of the Belgian league, but was fired after just a couple of months). We all knew it at the time but decided to give him the benefit of the doubt because it was obvious he had done very well as an assistent to both Dick Advocaat and Georges Leekens. He's good at managing individuals and he's had great relationships with both Flemish and Wallon players and he brought both groups together. His selection policy has been pretty good as well and he's a good motivator.
But that's where it ends. Right from the start it was clear that we were going to play a pretty slow type of game and rely on flashes of individual brilliance from our star players. Wilmots got away with that in the WC QF because it was for the greater good: finally getting to a WC again. However when we played like **** at said WC that's when people started to realise things weren't getting better, they were getting worse. It didn't really help when Wilmots made dumb comments, like saying he didn't feel the need to practice set pieces or corner kicks (the evidence of that was pretty clear during games). When we lost to Argentina there was some moaning from the general public because we didn't create much of anything but still, since we lost to a big team, it was deemed somewhat acceptable.
However, at no point during the past 2 years have we seen the progress we all hoped for. We've played some atrocious games during the EURO qualifying. We were shutout twice by Wales, we held on for dear life at Israel and at Cyprus (both 1-0 wins) and even Andorra managed to score against us. But because we won friendlies against France and Italy and eventually won our QF group, Wilmots got away with it again. He can't this time though. He needs to go and everyone knows it, it's also the first time everyone in the Belgian media agree with eachother and say it out loud. There has always been some form of faith in Wilmots but that's gone now.
Having said that, I don't think you can put this 100% on Wilmots alone. Players are at fault as well. I mean this is supposed to be the golden generation but imo there seems to be a serious lack of personality in this group. You'd think after being outmatched so many times in certain games, someone would step up against the coaching staff. But nobody takes their responsibility. Kompany's the leader of this team, but his "its all good" mentality is really frustrating. Hazard doesn't take things seriously and shouldn't be the vice captain. De Bruyne is always playing his own game. Witsel has been a shadow of his former self.. he was great at Standard and Benfica, but I'm not sure what happened in Russia. He is literally making himself invisible on the pitch. Alderweireld and Vertonghen are good defenders but they're still prone to making mistakes, and they're no leaders.
When you have a terrible coach, and you've got the kind of players we have, they should be able to correct themselves during games when you're not playing well. Maybe this will sound a bit arrogant, but with all this talent, do you really need a manager to beat a team like Wales? These guys plays at the biggest clubs in the world, they've been together at the NT for years now, shouldn't they be able to figure **** out themselves instead of pointing at eachother during the game?