Red Devils are making Belgium happy again

I've never really been into football and I'm sure I know nothing about it, but I must admit that for a few weeks, it's just all over the place in Belgium. It's also a way to socialise, when you have nothing to say... You just go "watched the match yesterday?" and people feel obliged to start talking. So I watched the "Red Devils", the Belgian national team, playing against different countries and I was pretty surprised by their victories. Last Thursday, they won against South Korea, but they had already qualified for the round of 16 matches by defeating Algeria (who booed them the whole first half-time) and Russia. Did they get lucky at that? At least, it makes people talk.

Half-Flemish half-Rwandan Kompany, Prince Harry's look-alike De Bruyne, slender-limbed goalkeeper Courtois, 70s Afro haircut Fellaini, Mathieu Kassovitz's look-alike Mertens (see below)... a lot of friendly and easily recognisable faces in the crew. Also, they're around my age, so it's easier for me to identify to them. In addition, we have a record: Origi, 19, the youngest scoring football player at a World Cup since Messi in 2006.

Don't you remember French movie Amélie?

After qualifying, the team was congratulated by the Royal Family (aka. Philippe & Mathilde) and will also appear on the city hall's balcony in Brussels, an honour only for happy few that marked Belgian sport history (Eddy Merckx, Justine Henin...). Anyway, Belgium is globally happy about the team, on both the Flemish and the Walloon sides, a nice example of what a good living-together philosophy would be in a multilingual (Dutch, French, even German...) and multicultural country... But apparently politics and football have nothing to do with each other, says the N-VA... Whatever!

But from all this Belgian passion emerged a general contempt from abroad... French people, including commentator Pierre Ménès, described our team as overrated and the matches as boring, like Look, the supporters are falling asleep already!... well not when we scored a goal at the end! Also, the Telegraph described the players as "ponies" and claimed that young player Origi was faking injuries in order to get a penalty... In general, the Red Devils are said to be lucky more than talented.

Let's face the truth… Our country is more famous for our female tennis players or our comic books than for our football...  But even in the case Belgian plays wrong, we're still winning, and it gives hope to Belgians, but also to anyone else who dreams of achieving something big but has an inferiority complex! And the recipe works! We got an unusually high number of people watching the last matches and we see Belgian flags on every window. ...And people try to learn their national anthem, which, I must admit, don't know half of the lyrics!... Chauvinism, you say? Simply pride, of something that's hardly ever happened and probably won't last, so let's just enjoy the moment and stop thinking about other countries' eagerness!

Belgian flag sponsored by local beer makes a nice blanket

And if you like watching football and you don't care about the fact everything is about money and we all know it's going to end up as a South American World Cup... Belgium-USA's match is next Tuesday evening and PM Elio Di Rupo already challenged Barack Obama in a tweet, saying "I am betting some great Belgian beers that our @BelRedDevils will make it to the quarter final!" I'm sure Obama will support or at least sympathise with "brave little Belgium"...

Do you have a similar or different opinion on the Red Devils? Share it!