Martinez gets the most from ‘boring’ squad
With three national languages and a Spanish coach who speaks none of them, Belgium’s World Cup camp might be a feuding Tower of Babel.
But bench boss Roberto Martinez has forged a harmony he is proud to say makes his club “boring”.
A common language of global English unites a star-studded squad in which only one man still plays in the domestic Belgian league, China-based midfielder Axel Witsel said.
“There’s no problem,” said the former Standard Liege, Benfica and Zenit St. Petersburg player.
“We are Belgium. We are all together and that’s the most important thing.”
Disappointments at past major tournaments have been marked by recriminations that reflect both a super-abundance of individual talent — with egos to match — and longstanding divisions between Belgium’s French- and Dutch-speaking halves.
It was Martinez’s record of forging disciplined team units in the English Premier League that helped get him hired after Marc Wilmots, Belgium’s top World Cup scorer, failed to lead it beyond the quarterfinals in Brazil and at Euro 2016.
And it was a mark of the Spaniard’s determination to put internal peace above personality that he withstood a storm of abuse from Belgian fans to leave behind Radja Nainggolan, saying the vocal Roma maestro would simply not fit on a squad where he would play second fiddle to Kevin De Bruyne and Eden Hazard.
When reporters probed for a story on the controversy, asking Witsel if Nainggolan had been in touch with the squad in Russia, Witsel batted the question away, flatly refusing to answer.
Prodded about the lack of controversy coming out of the camp compared to past Red Devils’ travels, Martinez made no excuses:
“We do want to be boring,” he said. “We’re not here to bring stories or try to fill pages for the wrong reasons. We want to be a group that cares about each other, and find a way to feed all the exceptional individual talent we have.”
Martinez has spoken in the past of his admiration for how Belgium’s sometimes awkward cultural and linguistic diversity creates very adaptable players.