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Martinez: Belgium need to be a team to win the World Cup

Martinez: Belgium need to be a team to win the World Cup

Roberto Martinez has issued a warning to Belgium, hinting that the Red Devils may not quite be the sum of their parts yet.

The former Everton Coach was admittedly speaking to Goal.com before his impressive 3-0 win over Egypt in a Brussels friendly:

"What is good about this generation is that when they come together they are a group of players that are prepared to work for each other and be a team.

"I don't think we should look any further than what we can achieve as a team and the team is made by outstanding individuals.

"But that's probably what we need to work extremely hard in the preparation that we can add all of these individuals to become a strong team without expecting one single player to win a football game because that will never take us to where we want to get."

The former Swansea gaffer has a point: the Red Devils were dogged by rumours of a divided locker room and poor leadership from previous manager Marc Wilmots, who never shined as a tactician as the golden generation didn’t make it past the quarter-finals either at the last World Cup or European Championships.

Martinez has already had some headscratchers to deal with, including “mattressgate”, in which it was believed that mattresses with the names of the Belgian 23 had already been sent to the Diables Rouges’ training camp in Russia - at a time when Martinez had yet to make his list public!

Though the report turned out to be inaccurate, it was a major scare for Belgium.