Thibaut Courtois walked to the touchline in the 71st minute at SoFi Stadium, and he did not bother to hide the tears. Belgium's goalkeeper, 34 years old and 107 caps deep, had been beaten not by a Spanish forward but by his own body. "I took a goal kick and I felt a lot of pain in my quadriceps," he said afterwards. "In the end the manager decided to take me off."
It was a small moment inside a 2-1 quarter-final defeat. It also looked a lot like a full stop.
An era that outlived its peak
Belgium have not been genuine contenders for some time, whatever the ranking said. They sat top of the FIFA list from September 2018 for close to four years, the third-longest reign in the ranking's history behind Spain and Brazil, per FIFA. That number always flattered them. The football stopped matching it a long time ago.
Trace the decline and it is almost tidy. Third at the 2018 World Cup, beaten by France in the semi-final and left with the bronze. A 2-1 quarter-final loss to Italy at Euro 2020, Nicolo Barella among the scorers and a Lukaku penalty not enough. A group-stage exit in Qatar in 2022, Belgium's first at a World Cup since 1998. A flat 1-0 defeat to France in the last 16 at Euro 2024. Each tournament asked the same question, and each time the answer came back a fraction quieter. Los Angeles was where the sentence finally ran out.
The names that made it are leaving
The squad that carried Belgium here reads like a leaving party. Axel Witsel is 37, with 136 caps. Romelu Lukaku is 34 and has 124. Kevin De Bruyne, 35, told Het Laatste Nieuws back in September 2024 that he would "probably" step away from the national side after this World Cup, though he left himself room, "we'll see," and insisted nothing was decided. Courtois, per Rudi Garcia, had reportedly floated the idea of a year away without telling the federation or his teammates.
Garcia, for his part, deserves no share of the blame. "From the beginning of the World Cup I didn't want players on the pitch who were not 100 percent, and that was Courtois today," he said, calling the loss of his goalkeeper "a hard hit to take." He inherited a side already past its summit and coaxed a competitive quarter-final out of it. That is nearer the ceiling than the floor.
There is a familiar ache to all of this, the sense of a group that promised a trophy and delivered, in the end, one very good semi-final and a long run of near misses. Belgium never won the thing. That is the hard part of the eulogy.
The succession is further along than the grief
Here is the part worth holding on to. The younger group did not look out of place in Los Angeles, they looked like the point. Belgium finished the tournament with 13 goals, more than any side bar France, per Opta and ESPN's team stats. Jeremy Doku, Amadou Onana, Matias Fernandez-Pardo and Charles De Ketelaere drove most of it.
De Ketelaere chose a fitting stage. His header in the 41st minute against Spain ended Unai Simon's run of 649 minutes without conceding, per Opta, proof that this Belgium can still hurt very good sides. They were undone late, by Senne Lammens spilling a Pau Cubarsi effort and Mikel Merino barely two minutes off the bench, not by any shortage of quality.
None of which softens the size of the rebuild. Belgium will likely open the next cycle without Witsel, probably without De Bruyne, and possibly without Courtois, a spine of a decade gone in a single summer. Replacing that much experience at once can swallow a federation whole. The difference this time is that the raw material is already on the pitch.
Which brings us back to Eden Hazard, who read the room earlier than most. "I have decided to put an end to my international career," he said in December 2022, the day after the group-stage exit, then offered the line that has aged rather well: "the next generation is ready." He was talking about players like these.
Belgium's real question now is not whether the golden generation is over. Courtois's tears answered that. It is who leads the next one, and whether a squad that scored freely but defended loosely can learn to close games out and turn 13 goals into something more than an honourable exit. For the first time in a decade, their biggest problem is not a shortage of gifts. The gold has gone. The talent, this time, has not gone with it.
Sources
- ESPN: World Cup recap, Spain beat Belgium in quarterfinal
- ESPN: Belgium's Youri Tielemans injury, Courtois exit
- ESPN: Belgium's golden generation is over after Euros exit
- Opta Analyst: Can Belgium's Next Generation Get the Golden Generation Over the Line?
- FIFA.com: Belgium's three-year reign in focus
- Sporza: Spanje-Belgie kwartfinale verslag
- ESPN/CBS Sports: Eden Hazard retires from international football
- voetbalnieuws.be: De Bruyne on his Rode Duivels future (HLN interview)
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