He is the scapegoat for the much too early elimination of the Red Devils at the 2022 World Cup. In place since 2016, Robert Martinez decided to throw in the towel a few minutes after the fateful split against Croatia to let another coach try to breathe new life into this Belgian nucleus. With the necessary hindsight, the Spanish coach returned at length to this 2022 World Cup, au micro d’HLN.
“If I still have this game against Croatia in my throat ?” he asks straight away. “No, it’s the match against Morocco that will still haunt me for a long time. We weren’t ourselves. A bit like against Canada for that matter. We were not in the state to win these meetings. Against Croatia it was different. We are probably the team that created the most chances against the Croatians. You will not find any tactical or technical expert who will be able to explain to you why we did not score in the last half hour. A question of milimeters…”
Our Dutch-speaking colleague then asks if it is correct to say that the Devils have shown two faces in Qatar. Once is not custom, Martinez comes out of his eternal reserve and agrees: “It’s just, yeah” he confides before trying to find explanations : “In 2018, we had three preparation matches. Not this time. Several countries used this group stage as preparation. It was the price to pay for a tournament in winter. Unfortunately, we needed two games to be ready. In 2018, I already felt at the airport that the team was ready. Emotionally and tactically. Here, I only felt that two days before the game against Croatia. After the game against Egypt, I felt that we were not ready. Nothing was going well for us…”