Courtois slams ‘anti-football’ Les Bleus
Belgium's players aimed digs at France after suffering a 1-0 loss to Les Bleus in their World Cup semi-final at Saint Petersburg Stadium yesterday morning (Singapore time).
France scored the only goal of the game in the 51st minute when Samuel Umtiti headed home a corner.
Didier Deschamps set up his French side conservatively as they ceded possession (64 per cent) to the Red Devils in hope of hitting them on the counter-attack. It proved efficient as Les Bleus registered 19 shots to Belgium's nine.
Despite that, Kevin de Bruyne, Jan Vertonghen and Vincent Kompany insisted that France were not the better side.
Said Kompany: "The team that wins this tournament won't be stronger than ours."
Red Devils goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois was more scathing, telling Belgian broadcaster Sporza: "France head (in) a corner and do nothing more than defend.
"I would have preferred to have lost in the quarter-finals to Brazil, at least that was a team that wanted to play football.
"(France) are just an anti-football team."
Belgian captain Eden Hazard shared similar sentiments.
Despite coming through French football's academy system and admitting ahead of the match that as a boy he grew up supporting Les Bleus, the 27-year-old told Belgian newspaper Het Nieuwsblad: "I prefer to lose with this Belgium than win with this France.
"But they do defend strongly and are very efficient...
"We have seen a fantastic Belgian team being eliminated by a team that was more solid than us."
While some are mourning the Belgium's golden generation failure to score silverware, national coach Roberto Martinez already has his eye on the future.
He said: "Belgian football has got a wealth of young talent coming through, and in my role, I've got an eye on the Euros in 2020.
" We'll need to regroup again, as happens after any tournament, we need to look at the younger generation, and try to become stronger from tournament to tournament.
"There is the drive and ambition."
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