Martinez calls end to his Belgian role after group stage exit

December 2 – Belgium’s coach Roberto Martinez has stepped down following his side’s goalless draw with Croatia and premature exit from the World Cup. 

At a news conference, Martinez: “That was my last game with the national team and it’s emotional as you can imagine. It was going to be the end whether we were world champions or out in the group stage. It has nothing to do with being eliminated at this stage. This is the time for me to accept that this day is the last game.”

“I took the decision just before the World Cup. I always work in the long term. I believe the long-term projects need to be long term and they need to be set in advance. As you can imagine, since 2018 I have had many opportunities to leave and take jobs at club level. I always wanted to be loyal, I always wanted to finish the job and now I don’t resign, this is the end of my contract. This was always the plan.”

His loyalty, in particular, to his aging stars backfired as Belgium endured a miserable campaign in Qatar. It was the tournament too far for Belgium’s golden generation who had dazzled at the previous finals, claiming bronze in Russia. They finished third again, but this time in the group stage, spelling a backdoor exit.

In their curtain raiser, Belgium played some disastrous football but prevailed 1-0 against Canada. Things however got worse against Morocco when the Red Devils slumped to a 2-0 defeat. They couldn’t find the net either against 2018 runners-up Croatia with Romelu Lukaku, a second-half substitute, missing a series of major chances. However, his commitment couldn’t be questioned amid rumours of fractures and bust-ups in the Belgian dressing room.

Martinez, who succeeded Marc Wilmots as Belgium’s coach in 2016, pointed at the Morocco defeat as the cause of their early departure.

“When you come to the World Cup, you have to play three games and we only played one,” he said. “The first two games, we were fearful, we were not the team that we are, we listened to the noise on the outside and we were feeling the responsibility.

“We played thinking that we could lose the game and that we could be out and that’s what cost us progressing. If we had gone through, I think we would have seen the real Belgium and we could have been very competitive.”

Martinez made a point of it to hail the golden generation of Belgian football. “In 2016 we were not the golden generation,” he said. “The golden generation were the ones who reached the semi-finals in Mexico in 1986. Since then, this generation has become the golden generation of Belgian football.

“There is no doubt. They won the bronze medal in 2018, for four years they were No 1 in the world, 21 of them have their [Uefa] A licences, which means they will be coaching the next generation for the next 20 years. And in this time we have built a state-of-the-art training facility. They haven’t won a tournament but leaving a legacy is more important than winning a tournament.”

The Belgian FA will also need to find a new technical director as Martinez served in that role as well.

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