Belgium hatch a devilish plan

What the devil? It’s Belgium’s mascot being hatched from a massive egg...

There’s only one correct way to unveil a new mascot: stick a giant egg outside an opera house for five days, then get a devil to leap out of it, terrifying the unsuspecting locals. That’s what happened when Belgium’s six-month campaign to find a World Cup mascot recently came to an end outside the Theatre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels. The scheme started in inauspicious fashion – the Belgian FA let the players have a go at designing something, only for Romelu Lukaku to produce the world’s worst sketch which looked like the infamous Brazilian mascot Mister Testicle.

So a design competition was opened up to the fans, and most came back with ideas based on the team’s Red Devils nickname: of the 11 finalists, 10 were devils and one was a life-size chip, in tribute to Belgian fries. More than 20,000 people cast a vote and most of them played devil’s advocate, leading to the selection of the imaginatively named Red.

Supporters were then invited to sit on the giant egg to keep the mascot warm before it hatched in March, immediately launching into a choreographed routine with some dancers.

“When he’s not supporting the Red Devils, you will find him on the dance floor!” said a Belgian FA press release. If you ever bumped into that thing down your local discotheque, you’d be forgiven for thinking that you’ve had a few too many...