Belgium’s national football team has been known as the Red Devils since 1906. The squad is under the global jurisdiction of FIFA and is governed in Europe by UEFA. Most of Belgium’s home matches are played at the King Baudouin Stadium in Brussels. It appeared in the end stages of thirteen FIFA World Cups and five UEFA European Championships. The Red Devils won the gold medal at the 1920 Olympic football tournament.
About Belgium national football team in brief
Belgium’s national football team has been known as the Red Devils since 1906. The squad is under the global jurisdiction of FIFA and is governed in Europe by UEFA. Most of Belgium’s home matches are played at the King Baudouin Stadium in Brussels. It appeared in the end stages of thirteen FIFA World Cups and five UEFA European Championships. The Red Devils won the gold medal at the 1920 Olympic football tournament. During the national player career of forward Paul Van Himst, the most-praised Belgian footballer of the 20th century, Belgium took third place at UEFA Euro 1972. The team topped the FIFA World Rankings for the first time in November 2015 and finished third at the 2018 World Cup. Belgium has long-standing football rivalries with its Dutch and French counterparts, having played both teams nearly every year from 1905 to 1967. In the first period of the 1980s to the early 1990s, the team finished as runners-up at UEFAEuro 1980 and fourth in the 1986 World Cup; FIFA does not recognise these results because Belgium fielded some English players. At the 1920 Summer Olympics, in their first official Olympic appearance, the Red Devil’s beat the Netherlands in a controversial final in which their Czechoslovak opponents left the pitch. In 1950, Belgian journalists considered the draw of the 1954 World Cup to be the most surprising result of that day, even more than Switzerland’s victory over the Italian stars. However, Belgium were eliminated after a loss to Italy in the second group game of the tournament. The Belgian team remained active with unofficial international matches in the 1940s and 1950s, with only one of eight major tournaments during the 1950s and the 1960s: the World Cup: the 1954 1954.
The first official international match was played on 1 May 1904, against France at the Stade du Vivier d’Oie in Uccle; their draw left the Évence Coppée Trophy unclaimed. On 1 September 1895, ten clubs for football, athletics, cricket and cycling founded the Belgian sports board Union Belge des Sociétés de Sports Athlétiques ; a year later UBSSA organised the first annual league in Belgian football. During the following decades association football supplanted rugby as Belgium’s most popular football sport. From 1912, UBS SA governed football only and was renamed UBSFA. The national team only played unrecognised friendlies, with matches in and against France during the Great War. In their first three World Cups, Belgium lost all of their matches at the FIFA final tournaments. According to historian Richard Henshaw, the growth of Central Europe, Scandinavia, South America and South America left Belgium behind in the first three decades of the 21st century. In 2014, the Belgian national team won the European Championship and reached the quarter-finals of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. Belgium won the Champions League in 2014 and 2014 European Championship in France and 2014 Euro qualifiers in the Netherlands and in Germany. The Belgium national team is coached by Marc Wilmots and later Roberto Martínez in the 2010s.
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This page is based on the article Belgium national football team published in Wikipedia (as of Jan. 04, 2021) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
