Back from Rourkela, the Belgian players worked for nearly 90 minutes to prepare for their quarter-final clash scheduled for Tuesday night in India. Diligent sessions and implemented with particular attention to penalties.
By Laurent Toussaint, special envoy to Bhubaneswar
VSIn the scorching heat and over 31 degrees, the Belgian players trained this afternoon on pitch 2 of the Kalinga Stadium. The session took place without Alex Hendrickx who started his rehabilitation away from the group and who had an MRI on his right knee, early in the morning, and without Arthur Van Doren, who worked, rather, on his strengthening muscles to avoid a relapse after his back injury. Regarding the Antwerp defender’s health condition, it was the most total radio silence. A request from the coach who doesn’t want to divulge any tendencies that could affect his opponents in the future. It is likely that the package will only be announced this Monday at the end of the morning. Meanwhile, the Pinoké players appear to be in good shape. He joined the group at the end of the session and he was walking normally even if the diagnosis showed a torn internal ligament.
In the group, there is the usual good humor. Lions are relaxed but very diligent at every practice. After about twenty minutes of warm-up under the command of Mick Beunen, the forwards worked in groups of 2 to perfect finishing, deviations and rebounds in front of goal. At the other end of the pitch, the rest of the players work on ball possession before engaging in a long session of pc and penalty shootouts. Loïck Luypaert, Tom Boon, Tanguy Cosyns and Nicols De Kerpel took care of their sleep before spending much time, too, in phases, fleshing out the details of the many variants. Parts of the training that staff were obviously asked not to film so as not to reveal anything. And Adam Comments, national technical director, has kept a close eye since he asked, at one point, the group of Indians watching the session not to stay behind the fence and return to the stadium.
The group will follow closely the 8th between India and New Zealand
“It was a fairly light session,” admitted Sebastien Dockier before returning to the bus to return to the hotel. “We took care of some details. We especially want to touch the ball before working on the computers and penalties which will of course be very important from a knockout game. It’s always good to be able to shoot as much as possible to go out feeling good 2 days before our next deadline. The trip to Rourkela was a great experience and we digested it perfectly. We’re still going to work things out tomorrow but we’ll be 100% ready Tuesday night for this quarter-final. »
Meetings will continue to double over the next 48 hours. Michel van den Heuvel and his staff did not want to squander the opportunity before the next meeting against the winner of the clash between India and New Zealand. A encounter that will be joined by several Red Lions in the Kaling Stadium stands at the end of the day (14:30, Belgium time) to experience it as close as possible in front of a stadium which had to sell out to nearly 15,000 excited Indian supporters.
