Argentina v Belgium: Golden generation basking in glory of world stage
12 years ago, Belgium's current crop of stars were a gaggle of schoolboys on the cusp of stardom
When Belgium last qualified for the tournament in 2002, the present squad were a disparate gaggle of schoolboys poised unknowingly on the brink of global stardom.
Eden Hazard, then a slender 11-year-old, was making a name for himself as a skilful winger with junior sides of his hometown club Royal Stade Brainois.
Vincent Kompany, the current captain, was embarking on his youth career with Anderlecht, while Adnan Januzaj, the Manchester United winger, was only seven years old - but already a member of FC Brussels.
All the young players are suddenly playing abroad. They all used to play in Belgium. They were still good players, but only as good as the Belgian league
In their homes and football club social rooms, they will have watched on television as a side led by pugnacious midfielder Marc Wilmots progressed from the group phase, only to lose to Brazil in the last 16. Some 12 years later, in Brazil, they are the players carrying the hopes of their country, and Wilmots is the figure urging them on from the technical area.
Those 12 now play for Premier League clubs, while some - including Chelsea winger Hazard and the young goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois - are considered to be among the best in the world.
"All the young players are suddenly playing abroad," said experienced centre back Daniel Van Buyten, the only player aged over 30 in the squad.
"They all used to play in Belgium. They were still good players, but only as good as the Belgian league."
After years of expectation, Belgium's "golden generation" have finally arrived on the global stage and against Lionel Messi's Argentina today, they can truly fulfil their potential.
Belgian football has undergone a revolution in recent years, after former technical director Michel Sablon produced a radical blueprint for youth development in 2006, but the emergence of the 2014 side also owes much to serendipity.
Most were well on their way to becoming professionals when Sablon's proposals had taken effect, and players - such as Hazard, Kevin Mirallas, Thomas Vermaelen, and Jan Vertonghen - spent their formative years outside Belgium anyway.
Rather than progressing through the youth system en masse, the side did not begin to take shape until the 2007 Under-21 European Championship in the Netherlands.
Of the 23 in that tournament, where Belgium reached the semi-finals, eight are in today's squad: Vermaelen, Mirallas and Vertonghen, plus Marouane Fellaini, Axel Witsel, Nicolas Lombaerts, Anthony Vanden Borre and Laurent Ciman.
A year later, at the 2008 Beijing Games, Kompany and Mousa Dembele replaced Lombaerts and Witsel, with Belgium reaching the last four again.
"After the Olympics in 2008, where we finished fourth, I think we started to realise the kind of potential we had," Fellaini told magazine before the World Cup.
"The year before, we played at the European Under-21 Championship with a good team - we had Jan Vertonghen, Thomas Vermaelen, Kevin Mirallas, Axel Witsel, Sebastien Pocognoli ... good players.
"We knew we had a good generation. So we thought, now let's see what happens in five years."
Five years on from Beijing, the national team were still awaiting a major breakthrough after successive failures to qualify for the 2008 and 2012 European Championships and the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.
But things clicked in qualifying for this year's World Cup, where Belgium finished unbeaten, and despite some laborious displays in Brazil, they are on the verge of equalling their best performance yet at the tournament.
For Wilmots, however, talk of era-defining moments can wait. "Golden generation?" he said last week. "We can say that the day my team win something!"
