Belgium’s unplanned golden generation

Not any more. The team who Marc Wilmots, the caretaker manager, will send out at Wembley tomorrow evening will not only include the man who led City to the Barclays Premier League title, but Eden Hazard, likely to be the most expensive arrival on these shores this summer, as soon as a £32.2 million move to Chelsea is sealed.

They will be joined by Thomas Vermaelen, of Arsenal, Jan Vertonghen, soon to be a rival at Tottenham Hotspur, Marouane Fellaini, of Everton, and Moussa Dembélé, of Fulham.

Axel Witsel, of Benfica, and Steven Defour, of Porto, have caught Sir Alex Ferguson’s eye over recent seasons. Radja Nainggolan is destined for Juventus. Thibaut Courtois has been captured by Chelsea, although he spent last season on loan at Atlético Madrid, and he shares a parent club with Kevin de Bruyne and Romelu Lukaku.

It is, by Belgium’s and by anyone’s standards, a golden generation, as tarnished as that phrase now is in English eyes. And yet it is the product of no masterplan. It is, according to some, both a miracle and a mistake, and one that scarcely owes its emergence to its motherland at all.

“The best thing for Eden was to go to France,” Thierry Hazard, the father of Roman Abramovich’s latest trinket, says of his son’s move from his local side Tubize to Lille as a 14-year-old. “That way he could live at home, but have the best available facilities.”

Hazard’s is a story repeated throughout Wilmots’s squad. Kompany is almost unique in having enjoyed something of a career in his homeland, making more than 70 appearances for Anderlecht. As with Hazard, Vermaelen and Vertonghen have never played senior football in Belgium; neither has Toby Alderweireld, the defender. Kevin Mirallas, a striker, left for Lille at 16.

“The problem was that even the best clubs in Belgium had nothing to offer the young players,” says Stan van den Buijs, head of recruitment at Beerschot, the Antwerp club who lost Vermaelen and Vertonghen to Ajax as teenagers. Dembélé started his career at the 12,000-capacity Olympisch Stadion, too, leaving for Willem II, in the Netherlands, at 16.

“The level was not high enough — of playing in the top division, of coaching in the youth academies. It’s important for players of that quality to be training every day with guys just as strong as them from a young age. They could not do that when they were in Belgium.”

And so Beerschot signed an arrangement with Ajax, allowing the Dutch club to cherry-pick the most appetising prospects from their academy, and the Hazards encouraged their sons — Thorgan and Kylian, Eden’s younger brothers, are enrolled at Lens and Lille respectively — to take advantage of Uefa rules stating that a player can sign for a club within 90 miles of his home town.

“Belgium is benefiting from this now,” Van den Buijs says. “All of that generation have played at top clubs throughout Europe. They went away early and they have made it. Belgium was not ready to allow them to maximise their abilities, so they had to go abroad.”

Slowly, organically, things are changing. Belgium does not wish to be forced to send its sons to foreign shores to learn their craft. Fellaini and Witsel were the first products of a revitalised youth system at Standard Liège; they were joined, at 16, by Defour, plucked from Genk.

“We have invested a lot of money in our academy,” says José Jeunechamps, Standard’s head of youth development. “So have Anderlecht, and Genk, who have brought Kevin de Bruyne and Courtois through, too. We have learnt from elsewhere in Europe.

“We have increased the number of qualified coaches working with youngsters, we are working much more on the mental side of things. A few years ago, we were not producing players. Clubs now aspire to nurture their own talent. That has not always been the case in the past. Facilities are getting better and more players are coming through.”

That, perhaps, is the greatest barometer of success. A glance across Belgium suggests that Jeunechamps is right. At Anderlecht alone, Dennis Praet, Lamisha Musonda and Jordan Lukaku — Romelu’s younger brother — are considered as the standardbearers for a second wave. City have already picked up Mathias Bossaerts, a highly rated 15-year-old defender.

He may prove to be the exception, rather than the rule, though. “It’s impossible to keep the players until they’re 25,” Van den Buijs says. “But if you can keep them until they’re 21, then the fees are much larger and they can be reinvested in the youth systems.

“That means the players keep on coming through. I think now the facilities at Standard, at Anderlecht, here, are good enough to keep the players a little longer. Instead of losing them for €20,000 [about £16,000] as teenagers, maybe now we will sell them for €10 million. That is good for everyone.”

Not least, of course, Kompany. As long as the players keep coming through, he will not need to feel alone again.

Belgian football factories

Anderlecht

Vincent Kompany (now at Manchester City, £6 million)

Romelu Lukaku (now at Chelsea, £18 million)

Standard Liège

Marouane Fellaini (now at Everton, £15 million)

Axel Witsel (now at Benfica, £6 million)

Genk

Steven Defour (now at Porto, £5 million)

Kevin de Bruyne (now at Chelsea, £8 million)

Thibaut Courtois (now at Chelsea, £7 million)

Beerschot

Jan Vertonghen (now at Ajax, expected to join Spurs for £12 million)

Thomas Vermaelen (now at Arsenal, £8 million)

Moussa Dembélé (now at Fulham, £6 million)

Tubize

Eden Hazard (soon to be at Chelsea, £32.3 million)