Belgium won for the first time in five matches on Monday after a Romelu Lukaku hat-trick secured their 5-1 victory in a friendly against a Luxembourg side ranked 100 places below them.
Three weeks before their FIFA World Cup opener, Belgium showed off the tidy passing that has prompted many to tip them to do well in the tournament in Brazil and also blooded three debutants, including 19-year-old Manchester United winger Adnan Januzaj.
However, the defensive lapse that allowed Luxembourg to even the score is sure to encourage the hopes of their World Cup rivals Algeria, Russia and South Korea that they can upset the Group H favorites.
“I’m a bit of a perfectionist, but it was the first game in three weeks. I wasn’t so happy with organization in the first half,” coach Marc Wilmots said. “We had a reaction in the second half. We were perhaps a bit nonchalant, but we still have three weeks to go.”
A catalogue of goalkeeper injuries and the absence of No. 1 Thibaut Courtois — who was recovering from the Saturday’s Champions League final he played, and lost, with Atletico Madrid against Real Madrid — meant a first cap for Sammy Bossut, one of only three squad members playing in Belgium.
Otherwise, Belgium began with a lineup that may well start in their tournament opener against Algeria on June 17 in their first World Cup since 2002.
When Lukaku struck in the third minute on Monday, it looked like it would be a very tough night for the visitors, but 10 minutes later they equalized when Aurelien Joachim of Eerste Divisie side RKC Waalwijk span off Thomas Vermaelen and fired in.
This was perhaps the wake-up call that a slightly sleepy Belgium required.
In bagging his first international hat-trick, Lukaku had the doggedness of Marouane Fellaini to thank for his opener, a failed Luxembourg clearance for his second and himself for the third, which he scored after dribbling through the Luxembourg defense.
Belgium brought on five substitutes at halftime, giving Januzaj his international debut following his declaration of allegiance to Belgium a month ago. LOSC Lille Metropole’s Divock Origi, another uncapped teenager in the squad, replaced Lukaku on the hour mark.
Substitute Nacer Chadli scored Belgium’s fourth of the night, while Kevin de Bruyne converted a 91st-minute penalty to seal the rout.
Belgium were to fly to Stockholm yesterday for a training camp ending with a friendly against Sweden on Sunday in which Wilmots said he would try to simulate more of a World Cup feel with fewer substitutions.
After a few days on the Belgian coast, they are to play a warm-up match against Tunisia in Brussels before boarding their plane to Sao Paolo, Brazil, on June 10 and a match behind closed doors against the US two days later.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier