Can't disagree ... it's too early to phase Lombaerts out completely as he should have a few more good years in him ... I don't watch Zenit that much (usually crappy streams and lousy ties so I often don't bother) ... but you'd expect he wouldn't decline too badly before he's +/-34yo ... although he didn't pass his Sunderland medical IIRC ... missing a game to attend the birth of his kid, it would be very odd to hold that against him. As I said before he should have been called up ... he'd be very useful. Martinez claims he has enough experience already ... Denayer returned from injury and eventhough he has only played 20' lately, that's more than Kabasele ... IDK what it is but Martinez must see something in Kabasele that we don't get to see (maybe Denayer isn't fit enough as well). Hoping Denayer and Engels come good as we have to undoubtedly bring in talents to eventually replace the likes of Vermaelen and Lombaerts ... regardless, now wasn't the time/Lombaerts should have been here.
That wasn't great. I guess the positive was that Kabasele wasn't that bad considering he has only played 120 minutes of club football this season. And we got to see Eden Hazard and Thorgan Hazard representing Belgium together.
Belgium friendlies have become a real slog to watch; no urgency in the game and no movement. Mignolet, Ciman and Kabasele seemed up for it (two of whom aren't playing for their clubs; so maybe that's logical). Vertonghen at one point in the game made quite a disinterested face when Ciman was screaming at him...pretty telling. The fact Martinez doesn't want to replace Kompany with Lombaerts because 'he's left footed' is really dumb and one of those footballing stupidities. Kompany has played on the left a lot (with Van Buyten), yet he's right footed. It's still a central position, especially of you have one central defensive position that is literally square in the middle of the pitch. And by the way, if he called up Lombaerts he'd now have two right footed CDs in Ciman and Kabasele and two left footed in Lombaerts and Vertonghen. I guess now we know why his Everton backlines were a sieve in that last year.
To me Toby is the best CD in the team. If Toby and Kompany are not available Lombaerts should be an automatic replacement in any of the positions(right CD or left). He is very composed and seems to know his strengths and weaknesses very well. Better than Ciman any day.
Dembele, alongside Fellaini, is out. That leaves the choice of Defour or Tielemans. I'd go for Tielemans; but as already discussed, it should have been Nainggolan.
Timmy Simons will turn 40 soon and as he'll replace the injured Kabasele he can become the oldest RD ever if he earns his 94th cap. With both Kabasele and Kompany out (together with the others) ... Vertonghen, Ciman, Dendoncker and Simons will have to do ... reportedly Lombaerts is injured (if true he'll return in 10 days) ... Denayer could have been called up from the beginning.
http://sporza.be/cm/sporza/voetbal/Rode_Duivels/1.2818381 Denayer on holiday in Dubai ... Nainggolan, Lombaerts, etc. ... it all looks a bit amateur ... could be that Vandenbempt's impression that Martinez needs to get more support from our FA is spot on.
Good to see there are patterns instilled that finally allows Belgium to cut through defensive teams. A lot more wicked thinking going on in the 16, fooling our opponent. Greece will be a more interesting test.
Good performance. Estonia isn't a great team, but we have performed a lot worse against such opposition in the past, with largely the same players on the field. Dendoncker had a good game. Certainly did well for his first start and only his second cap (those five minutes in the friendly against France barely count). It's hard to properly judge the performance because the opposition was rather weak. Same applies to Tielemans.
The balance on the Martinez era so far Pros - tactically much better, with willingness to experiment - excellent use of wide players (Meunier and Carrasco), who look very comfortable in the 3-4-3 - freeing up of Hazard to allow him to think very offensively - trying to integrate all our best attacking players on the pitch at once is difficult, but it's being tried so as to maximise everyone's talent. - Lukaku looks good and involved in both play and goals Cons - team selection: I don't think we need to call up both Thorgan and Mirallas, or both Origi and Batshuayi; that said we need more central defenders. Right now Martinez is reacting to things like Kompany and Dembele getting injured (which should always be expected), instead of anticipating it and making plans for it when he announces the squad - Communication- very poor so far; one thing you have to give Wilmots credit for, especially early on, is that he protected his players and was not as into misdirection as Martinez (and Leekens before him). We're starting to see hear reports on players confused about the team selection and things that are being said that appear to be untruthful. - No real test so far, and since there is a marked difference between the energy levels between friendlies and qualifiers, I can't really get a good read of how we would do against better teams. -Defence-still a worry, but I'm praying by March we'll have Alderweireld, Vertonghen, Kompany, Lombaerts, Engels and Vermaelen healthy and available. It's a long shot, but as Frank Raes say, we will not win much with the state of our defence at the moment.
http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/news/y...ove-the-way-radja-plays-football-2854037.html Even though you have to take this with a grain of salt ... I prefer the "competitiveness/at least 50 players fighting for a spot on the team" approach of Martinez over Marc "I hardly have two players to rub together and if one gets injured we're fvcked" Wilmots ... who should have performed much better with the quality at his disposal and who mostly was full of shit himself ... farm boy is really full of it ... Wilmots constantly looked down on the Belgian Pro League and was often involved in petty fights (that's poor form for a KBVB employee while by the looks of it he received the most support of all our managers so far, including Martinez) ... also, he did throw players under the bus when he received criticism from the media or his dressing room (e.g. when Courtois was the one that had the courage to speak up) ... he preferred Defour/an extra defender over Nianggolan in the Brazil2014 squad ... he had Kompany take a share of the blame for the Brazil exit (compare his interview with the response of a mature manager that takes full responsability/shields his players) ... he needlessly left Lombaerts out of the France2016 squad ... Wilmots keeps blaming young defenders for his loss in Rijsel, basically a home game, against tiny Wales AGAIN (instead of protecting them) ... etc. Despite all of the warranted criticism that Wilmots had to deal with, it still looks as if he's allowed to get away with a whole lot more of his nonsense than Martinez ... sure expectations were much lower when the job was dropped in Wilmots's lap ... still he was rightfully given the sack and the job he handed over seems a lot more toxic now ... Martinez deserves more credit ... things won't keep going his way ... once that happens I doubt he'll be given half a chance while Wilmots squandered many ... especially wasting the golden opportunity that was our very soft path to the France2016 final.
Sounds like we'll face Russia in a friendly (28/03 in Sochi) ... if we wanted to gain familiarity with the host nation (more likely that our FA received a profitable offer from the Russians), we should schedule the friendly in June, hopefully in similar weather as June/July 2018, and we have to play an away qualifier in Estonia then anyway (but yea Russia will play in the confed. cup although they could still play friendlies in the weeks before). Still we already dropped down to 5th place on the FIFA ranking and we could lose top seed status before the draw ... being one of the top seeds is as good as it gets going into the World Cup ... we should NOT gamble as other teams look to overtake us (if a couple do we're no longer a top seed) ... even when we win the friendly v. Russia, we lose in the ranking ... we'd play a side that hasn't been involved in Qs and that has dropped down to a new low (55th place already and S.Arabia will overtake them in December while only Austria lost more points than Russia this year) ... pencil in softer opponents (teams that are ranked much higher than their actual strength; unlike our friendly with France when they were ranked well below their strength as they only played friendlies/didn't have to qualify as host) or better arrange less friendlies ... Germany has been giving their players breathers and Löw won't use his best players in the confed. cup ... maybe we should rest our guys a bit as well (also helps to prevent injuries/let little knocks heal). We're in the final stretch ... FIFA will probably use the Oct. 2017 ranking as usual and before it's published we can't afford to mess around ... the most important/highest yielding time frame has started already ... choose better opponents or just wait 10 months before playing a wasteful friendly.
According to HLN Russia will foot the bill for our stay and add €300k if we play them 3 days after our qualifier against Greece in Brussels ... reportedly it's almost a done deal ... a risky one though as I said before. The KBVB are also negotiating with Portugal (March 2018) and France (November 2017) to play a couple of friendlies in Brussels ... although France could have a more lucrative one lined up already ... and the KBVB are looking to pencil in another friendly ahead of the qualifier away to Estonia (9/06/2017) ... either against one of the Confed. Cup teams, e.g. Chile, or a short training camp in and against Norway. PS our T2, Graeme Jones, on our ambitions in Russia and on Nainggolan + Lombaerts.
Laurent Ciman who plays for Montreal in MLS. Is he a regular call up for the nation now? I recall he started in 1 of your games for the Euros. I'm quite surprised though that he gets chances since he's not playing in Europe.
Question for all who visit this thread ... How much of an impact do you think Henry is having on the team, especially on our attack? I get the feeling Henry is pushing to work with as many of our attacking players as possible (could be the reason why "too many" are called up) ... while they seem eager to work with him ... I keep hearing lots of positive comments from the media, the staff, ... and most importantly our players seem to get a lot from him ... I can imagine many, especially the youger guys, will like to pick his brain and it sounds like he's a good man manager as well. We do look a lot better than we used to and it wouldn't surprise me if Henry had a hand in our progress (sorry Ireland but you did take the hush money). @LouisianaViking07/09 ... because quite a few of our defenders were injured, we were thin at the back ... Ciman also has a positive influence off the pitch, I've heard, and as you can easily fit him into the squad plus he already feels comfy that's probably why he gets the call.
Think Henry will have a fairly positive effect on the strikers and their movement and finishing, but I wouldn't be surprised if he leaves the team fairly soon after he gets his trainer's diploma. I suspect positional coaches are a bit like tennis coaches in that they may get the player to think in a different way or work on some skills, but their impact to improve a player's performances are probably fairly short term. I might be way off with that however. I'll echo what Blondo said about Ciman, as he seems like a good influence, leader and talks a lot on the pitch, but as I've noted previously, he will hopefully not be a regular...it isn't a slight towards MLS though. I watched both Impact games versus Toronto and Ciman was absolutely at sea against Altidore. He was out muscled and out done for pace, and he probably should have been sent off in the second leg for a second yellow early on. I like Altidore a lot, however he isn't a world class striker; so imagine Ciman facing Lewandowski or Sanchez; it would be carnage. He can maybe survive in a sweeper role where he isn't defending man to man, but I suspect he would still be heavily exposed against better teams.
Great to see Radja perform again ... Martinez went to see him ... good timing. Journo claiming however that ... Er zouden extra-sportieve redenen zijn geweest voor zijn niet-selectie. Dat hij rookt, dat hij zich niet fit verklaarde voor de interlands tegen Bosnië en Gibraltar maar wel een oefenwedstrijdje speelde tegen de beloften van AS Roma, dat hij op stap was geweest op een vrije dag van de Duivels... - nieuwsblad.be
Reportedly we'll play a friendly with the Czechs in June ...ranked 43th ATM, ffs, in the most important/highest yielding time frame ... SMH ... a real shame they couldn't get Chile, rank 4, just above us and an interesting test for the World Cup. Also, the mention of a money-spinning trip to Asia could cost us ... a friendly with China (81) or Thailand (126) ... ffs ... at least play Japan (46) or S.Korea (37) then.