A BELGIAN BLUEPRINT: The story of how one man, armed with a brochure and tactical nous, changed a nation from championship no-hopers to global superstars



No one can say for certain when the tipping point was reached. When Belgian football looked deep into its soul and discovered an empty hollow.



Some say the European Championship of 2000 was the watershed. Co-hosts of the tournament with Holland, Belgian aspirations were high.



They would go on to reach a sixth successive World Cup in 2002, they were a nation to be reckoned with.

Shock: Belgium were humiliated when they were knocked out of the group stages of their own tournament

Change: The days of Enzo Scifo (right, with England's Paul Gascoigne) were over

Different style: And although there was some encouragement when reaching the World Cup in 2002, one man knew something had to be done...

Game changer: Michel Sablon had a simple, but effective, idea to inspire a footballing nation

But the days of Enzo Scifo and Franky Vercauteren had gone. When Turkey pipped the co-hosts as qualifiers from their first-round group at Euro 2000, there was humiliation. But no real surprise.



Their best young players were heading elsewhere. To France and the Netherlands. The Jupiler pro league was no longer seen as a place for young players to blossom and grow.



At the glass-fronted offices of the Belgian Football Association on the outskirts of Brussels, the technical director, Michel Sablon, saw football moving on and Belgium failing to move with it.



‘Our professional clubs were failing,’ he tells Sportsmail. ‘And the level of football from the national teams was not good enough.



‘We could not compete with the major countries like Spain and France.



‘So, in 2002 we started to look closely at France and had meetings with them twice a year. We did the same with Holland. Sometimes we met with Germany as well and tried to improve what we were doing.



‘At that time we were nowhere. Our Under-17 and Under-19 teams were ranked between 23 and 28 in the world. We really were nowhere. Now? We are top 10.’



It was hardly an overnight journey.

Time: Slowly but surely, players started to be produced, some in Belgium, like Vincent Kompany (left, with Celtic's John Hartson

Technique: While Eden Hazard plied his trade in France with Lille

A FRIGHTENING SQUAD...

Belgium squad for World Cup qualifers: Goalkeepers: Koen Casteels (Hoffenheim), Thibaut Courtois (Atletico Madrid), Simon Mignolet (Liverpool).



Defenders: Toby Alderweireld (Atletico Madrid), Laurent Ciman (Standard Liege), Guillaume Gillet (Anderlecht), Nicolas Lombaerts (Zenit St. Petersburg), Sebastien Pocognoli (Hanover 96), Daniel van Buyten (Bayern Munich), Jelle van Damme (Standard Liege), Jan Vertonghen (Tottenham Hotspur)



Midfielders: Nacer Chadli (Tottenham Hotspur), Steven Defour (Porto), Moussa Dembele (Tottenham Hotspur), Marouane Fellaini (Manchester United), Timmy Simons (Club Bruges), Axel Witsel (Zenit St. Petersburg)



Forwards: Zakaria Bakkali (PSV Eindhoven), Christian Benteke (Aston Villa), Kevin de Bruyne, Eden Hazard, Romelu Lukaku (all Chelsea), Dries Mertens (Napoli), Kevin Mirallas (Everton).

Sablon, a member of the Belgian coaching team at the World Cup finals in Mexico, Italy and the United States, sat down with a blank notepad. What he wrote down was hardly reinventing the wheel.



But the blueprint produced was enough to create stirrings of unrest and dissent amongst clubs for years to come. Relationships built up over many years in the Belgian game were tested.



‘We made a brochure,’ Sablon recalls. It was more of a book, in fact.



‘We had a whole group of people around a table in the technical department and we decided to make a plan for three target groups.



‘First of all was the clubs, secondly the national team and third the coaches of the schools.



‘So we adopted the same vision for all three groups. We went to the clubs and asked them to play a certain way below Under-18 levels.



‘We asked them to play 4-3-3 with wingers and three midfielders and a flat back four. In the old days, it was always a flat back three, so this was brand new to them.



‘It took more than five or six years before everyone could bring themselves to accept it. Because for most of the coaches and the clubs, all they cared about was winning the game. Nothing else.



‘But that was absolutely wrong for the development of all the players. Totally wrong.



‘It wasn’t easy. In the beginning it was terrible. But eventually they began to see it. They went with us because they saw that what we told them worked. It made players better.



‘I knew the coaches over many years. I convinced them that we were serious people.



‘That this was no b*******. We knew what we were doing.’

Destined for glory? Belgium now have a team of stars, many of whom play in the Premier League

Even so, telling Anderlecht and Standard Liege how they should raise their young players and what formation they should play was a thorny, complex issue. Calling in university boffins, Sablon asked the academics to film 1,500 youth games and analyse them.



The conclusion? That winning at all costs was over-rated. In response, the Belgian FA urged five against five games at youth levels, seven against seven for older kids and a delayed introduction to full-size pitches.



At youth international level, promising young players were moved up to the next level as quickly as possible, even when it meant weakening the chances of qualification for European championships.



Yet, in 2007, a youth team featuring Eden Hazard and Christian Benteke made the last four of the European Under-17 championships for the first time in Belgium’s history. The next year, a slightly older group featuring Marouane Fellaini and Vincent Kompany had a good Olympics.

PL stars: Tottenham pair Moussa Dembele (left) and Nacer Chadli (right) are mainstays in the Belgium team

Squad: Marouane Fellaini (left), now of Manchester United, while Thomas Vermaelen (right) plays for Arsenal



Solid: Kompany (left) captains the side, and is helped at the back by Jan Vertonghen (right)

‘It was working,’ adds Sablon. ‘Players like Fellaini, Hazard, (Jan) Vertonghen and (Thomas) Vermaelen were good at 17 or 18.



‘But I have no doubt. What we did with our development system made them better. It made them the players they are now.



‘The clubs looked at the FIFA rankings and saw us moving up. Finally they said: “This works”.’



Unsurprisingly, Sablon’s blueprint has been adopted wholesale by SFA performance director Mark Wotte.



The Dutchman offers no apology for looking at a golden generation of Belgian players containing Kompany, Hazard, Fellaini, Benteke, Vertonghen, Moussa Dembele, Nacer Chadli, Vermaelen and Romelu Lukaku and saying: “This is the way to go”.’



Mark McGhee, Gordon Strachan’s assistant, believes it’s less simple than that. The Belgians have a population of 11 million. They have also benefited from a huge wave of multicultural immigration.

Way to go: Mark Wotte, formerly manager of Southampton, is now using this Belgian bluebrint on Scotland

Tough job: Gordon Strachan (left) helped by Mark McGhee (right) have the job of bringing youngsters through

In Brussels, Europe’s business and political heartland, footballers of African descent were born. Benteke and Kompany are of Congolese parentage, while Fellaini’s background is Moroccan. Yet almost all of the team are born in Belgium.



Sixteen now play for the biggest clubs in the English Premiership. Kompany is Manchester City captain, Fellaini has completed a £27million move to Manchester United, while big-spending Spurs have Vertonghen, Chadli and Dembele in their ranks.



To try to ape this, the SFA have invested £20m in seven performance schools and indoor training centres. Yet the bricks and mortar is the easy part.

Beat this: Alex Witsel is chased by Jamie Mackie of Scotland

Hope? James McArthur (left) and Robert Snodgrass (right) are two of Scotland's most influential players

Sablon tried to change the psychology of a nation. To change the entire footballing culture from a win-at-all-costs mentality.



‘Scotland is in the shadow of England. But you know what? That makes England a target.



‘We compare ourselves in Belgium to the best in the world now. That started with Spain and France.



‘We are not the best in the world — but we are working hard to be there.



‘We didn’t want to be condemned to the role of also-rans any longer. But we didn’t sit around feeling sorry for ourselves.

