Football: 'Red Devils' rallying point in divided Belgium

The success of their ’Red Devils’ is a rare rallying point for football mad Belgium, otherwise deeply divided between its Flemish-speaking north and a Francophone south ahead of general elections next year.

Starved of success since reaching the World Cup semi-finals in 1986, a golden generation of players featuring such stars as Eden Hazard, who plays for Chelsea and Manchester City’s Vincent Kompany, jointly lead their group with Croatia on the qualifying road to the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.

On Tuesday, manager Marc Wilmots’ team beat Macedonia 1-0 in Brussels before an enthusiastic and boisterous crowd of 47,000 who made no distinction between Flemish or French, cheering on their team.

“We have had a lot of political conflicts in Belgium in recent years but I can see that football brings everyone together,” said one Flemish supporter. ”We are all the same and we are all here to support the Belgian team.”

The World Cup in Brazil opens on June 12, 2014, just two weeks after general elections scheduled for May 25 which are shaping up to be divisive, with some Flemish nationalists pressing for as much distance as possible from the south and its Socialist ways.

If the national team, however, qualifies for Brazil, the players will be making their final preparations just as the election campaign unfolds, cutting across the political rhetoric as supporters of both persuasions get behind their players.