Belgium falls short as familiar fine margins thwart Martinez again
Related Story: Umtiti rises highest as France vanquishes Belgium to reach World Cup final
"Unfortunately for us the difference was a dead-ball situation. The game was very close, very tight and it was going to be decided by a little bit of luck in front of goal."
Belgium manager Roberto Martinez was half right in his summation of his side's 1-0 World Cup semi-final loss to France. Yes, the difference was a dead-ball situation but no, it couldn't simply be put down to "luck".
In the latter stages of any major tournament, but especially the World Cup, the margins between success and failure are unbelievably fine. Both Belgium and France fielded teams with world class talent in every position, played their own brands of thrilling attacking football and gave themselves an opportunity to progress to the final.
But as the man himself suggested, it was a corner that split the teams. France worked and executed it wonderfully from an attacking sense, while Belgium found itself in a complete mix, defending Paul Pogba's cross and Samuel Umiti's movement horribly.
1-0, game over. France through and Belgium out.
That Martinez was happy to put this down to bad luck on the day should come as no surprise, as his attitude towards set pieces is well documented.
Put bluntly, he doesn't value them.
Martinez is a good manager and an extremely likeable human being. He wants his teams to play the right way, and when the circumstances have been just right he has put together some excellent sides.
But he has sizable blind spots and his subscription to the theory that the set piece is a relatively unimportant part of the game might be the biggest.
In an attacking sense, Martinez said he values goals from open play as "more satisfying", and that a "dead ball situation is less in your control", which isn't exactly sacrilege but might be worth adjusting in a tournament where nearly half the overall goals have come from a set piece.
But far more concerning were the revelations in former Everton midfielder Leon Osman's 2015 autobiography that detailed how Martinez's team very rarely worked on set pieces at training, effectively deeming it a waste of time.
"We questioned why we weren't working on set-pieces and Graeme Jones, the assistant manager, said 'how many do you have to defend in a game? Three?'," Osman wrote in his book.
"'So why would we spend two hours standing around to defend three set-pieces when we could work on moving the ball?'"
It's this sort of mentality that, among other things, has ensured Martinez has remained a close-but-not-quite manager throughout his club career, and is why so many people raised concerns when he was appointed to the main job in Belgium.
This golden generation of Belgian football will need to wait another two years for a crack at silverware, and the danger is becoming more and more real that this incredibly talented group of players will finish their international careers empty-handed.
At this World Cup we've seen the best and the worst of Roberto Martinez, the reasons some hoped he would be the perfect man to unlock the attacking flair that Marc Wilmots had kept caged, and the concerns held by those who had seen his sides unravel and disintegrate over the years.
Martinez was lauded for his work against Brazil, where he played his favourite trick card from his time at Everton — Romelu Lukaku moves to the right, opening room for an advanced midfielder, in this instance Kevin de Bruyne, to play as a false nine in the space Lukaku has created.
For 45 minutes, it worked perfectly. Brazil's defence was muddled, Belgium flew out to a 2-0 lead and Martinez took the credit.
But even in that game, one which was completely changed by an early Fernandinho own goal, the warning signs were there. Brazil should have scored a hatful of goals as it took control of possession after the break, and at least two or three from set plays alone.
It's a step too far to say this was a Belgium team built on broken foundations, but it's certainly one that had a flawed premise at its heart, and it can't come as a shock that the small margins that have defined Martinez's entire career have come to define Belgium's World Cup.
[contf]
[contfnew]
ABC .net
[contfnewc]
[contfnewc]
