World Cup 2018 | 6th July | QF: Brazil vs Belgium, KO 19:00 (BST)

[MCFC1993]

FRIDAY 6TH JULY

BRAZIL VS BELGIUM

Match kicks off at 19:00 (BST) on BBC 1. Coverage starts at 18:30 (BST). Presented by Gary Lineker, pundits and commentators to be announced.

Another superb game on Friday, Brazil seem to have found a way to win and Belgium have had individual brilliance to bail them out of tough situations. Both teams have quality all over the pitch. Blues involved on both sides will make it a tough choice for some.

Brazil’s route to the Quarter’s:

Belgium’s route to the Quarters:

Brazil’s goal scorers so far:
Coutinho (2)
Neymar (2)
Paulinho (1)
Thiago Silva (1)
Firmino (1)

Belgium’s goal scorers so far:
Lukaku (4)
Hazard (2)
Mertens (1)
Batshuayi (1)
Januzaj (1)
Vertonghen (1)
Fellaini (1)
Chadli (1)

 

[Afterthefact]

Brazil is vulnerable on the flanks. Mexico had countless breaks against them but for some reason they'd just dribble straight into a black hole in the center and leave the wingers wasted - time and again; basically the opposite of the last Belgium goal v japan, which is what Mexico should have done all day with brazil.

Would love to see kev open that up.

Or, other way, would like to see gabby to do some damage...not fair how many runs he's made and how much space he keeps creating to no notice.

 

[bluemoon32]

Come on Brazil

 

[CityInWashingtonState]

I really despise Neymar as a person and am therefore rooting for Belgium - but Belgium seem to be far more susceptible on defense. Probably Brazil win.

 

[aguero93:20]

This should be a superb game. No idea who'll win tbh as Brasil have looked very shaky at times against Serbia, Switzerland and Mexico when on the back foot and they will spend a fair bit of this game on the back foot. No Casemiro either. Belgium have bounced between amazing and ordinary so far.

 

[supercity88]

Playing Dembele would see Belgium win this one. He reads the game brilliantly and would stop the Brazilian counter attacks with ease. Belgium struggle to defend out wide as their wing backs push up and get no support from Hazard or Mertens. Dembele would cover that. Witsel is nowhere near as good.

Belgium will cause Brazil problems though. Will be a great game. If Belgium win this then they will feel like it could be their year. France v Uruguay will be attritional and France will be given no room to use their pace. Another game that is hard to call. The gulf in class between that side and the England side is huge.

 

[The Stockport Iniesta]

Belgium need to play kev further up the park and leave Mertens out, they were a far better team after those changes were made vs Japan.

 

[FlemishDuck]

Belgium need to play kev further up the park and leave Mertens out, they were a far better team after those changes were made vs Japan.

Not mertens, rather Carrasco.

The defensive issue is easy to recognise and easy to solve as it always was a concious choice to have an attacking player like Carrasco as left wingback and thats where there is weakness. Furthermore the other glaring issue is that KDB finds too few cover to move up in this system.

Otoh this was conciously an overly attacking set up by Martinez that did well against smaller teams, plenty of atackers on the wings stretches the opponents defense to the point where they needed to relinquish the flanks and let us cross or open up the central defense more and risk the punishment of Lukaku or an upcomming KDB, and weaker teams typicly had fewer in their repetoire to punish us for pressing that many body's forward.

But frankly if youre left wing is a vulnerabillety and thats because you had put an attacker there then the obvious sollution would be a rather defensive oriented wingback.

Furthermore we were pushing both wingbacks up at the same time, a more defensive aproach would be to only let one wingback at the time attack.
In that case the defending wingback can also slot into the midfield and allow KDB the cover in the back to move more forward.

This sollution can be easily made by putting in Dembele instead of Carrasco and then either revert to a 4-3-3 or have Dembele or Meunier slot into to the central midfield or defense according to the situation while only 1 of them moves up at any time in the attack. While 4-3-3 is still being a fairly attacking formation one of the attacking wingers should come aid the defense depending on what flank is being pressed so it becomes something of a 4-4-2 in defense. I would still either keep Mertens or Hazard prying on the counter when its not their flank being pressed as Belgium has the quality to be able to pull off really cutting edge counters with KDB distributing it to Hazard, Mertens or Lukaku. Mertens and Hazard link up nicely with Lukaku in such situations.

Not saying Mertens is not droppable, but not sure why we would drop him before Carrasco given Carrasco had bad games so far and is not the ideal sort of player for his position.

 

[The Stockport Iniesta]

Not mertens, rather Carrasco.

The defensive issue is easy to recognise and easy to solve as it always was a concious choice to have an attacking player like Carrasco as left wingback and thats where there is weakness. Furthermore the other glaring issue is that KDB finds too few cover to move up in this system.

Otoh this was conciously an overly attacking set up by Martinez that did well against smaller teams, plenty of atackers on the wings stretches the opponents defense to the point where they needed to relinquish the flanks and let us cross or open up the central defense more and risk the punishment of Lukaku or an upcomming KDB, and weaker teams typicly had fewer in their repetoire to punish us for pressing that many body's forward.

But frankly if youre left wing is a vulnerabillety and thats because you had put an attacker there then the obvious sollution would be a rather defensive oriented wingback.

Furthermore we were pushing both wingbacks up at the same time, a more defensive aproach would be to only let one wingback at the time attack.
In that case the defending wingback can also slot into the midfield and allow KDB the cover in the back to move more forward.

This sollution can be easily made by putting in Dembele instead of Carrasco and then either revert to a 4-3-3 or have Dembele or Meunier slot into to the central midfield or defense according to the situation while only 1 of them moves up at any time in the attack. While 4-3-3 is still being a fairly attacking formation one of the attacking wingers should come aid the defense depending on what flank is being pressed so it becomes something of a 4-4-2 in defense. I would still either keep Mertens or Hazard prying on the counter when its not their flank being pressed as Belgium has the quality to be able to pull off really cutting edge counters with KDB distributing it to Hazard, Mertens or Lukaku. Mertens and Hazard link up nicely with Lukaku in such situations.

Not saying Mertens is not droppable, but not sure why we would drop him before Carrasco given Carrasco had bad games so far and is not the ideal sort of player for his position.

Belgium are a man light in cm imo, 433 would solve it and leave Carrasco out, but if you play the same formation I'd leave Mertens out for another cm and play kdb further forward. 433 probably a better option, will Martinez change it?

 

[FlemishDuck]

Belgium are a man light in cm imo, 433 would solve it and leave Carrasco out, but if you play the same formation I'd leave Mertens out for another cm and play kdb further forward. 433 probably a better option, will Martinez change it?

Likely, he had a reason to aproach smaller teams with the attacking formation we used but Brazil is another beast asking for a different aproach.