The Belgium national football team’s thrashing of the US is a brilliant, familiar illusion

Belgium has just dispatched the United States from the 2026 World Cup with a heavy win. The mood is predictably triumphant, spilling over into geopolitical mockery and viral jibes at Donald Trump. It is exactly the kind of loud, cathartic victory that makes a nation believe its footballing demons are finally exorcised. They aren't.

We are locked in a tedious, cyclical loop with the Belgium national football team. Every major tournament, they deliver a spectacular demolition against a side fundamentally unequipped to handle their elite attacking talent. We are told the chemistry is finally right and the ghosts of past failures are banished. Then, inevitably, they meet a genuinely cohesive opponent in the later stages, and the entire structure collapses.

The problem is, and has always been, the dugout and the blueprint. Belgium consistently fields a terrifying roster of individual talent, yet they operate without a unified team strategy. When Plan A hits a wall, there is no adaptable leadership to rewrite the script in real time. It is a squad of virtuosos waiting for someone to hand them the sheet music, continuously managed by people who hope the sheer weight of talent will compensate for a total lack of tactical imagination.

Thrashing the Americans is undeniably fun, and the accompanying social media victory laps write themselves. But beating an overmatched US side is not proof of a championship team; it is merely an exhibition of individual superiority. Until Belgium installs leadership capable of turning a collection of stars into an actual, adaptable machine, this World Cup run will end exactly how the others did: with immense potential, wasted on the sport's biggest stage.