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In light of this brilliant opener from the 'Iconic Images' thread: it got me thinking about the current national team and even off the top of my head I could think of a pretty decent starting XI, as well as cover in most areas of the pitch (4-2-3-1): MIGNOLET VANDEN-BORRE VERMAELEN KOMPANY VERTONGHEN FELLAINI DEMBELE MERTENS HAZARD MIRALLAS LUKAKU SUBS: COURTOIS, VAN BUYTEN, DEFOUR, DE BRUYNE, BENTEKE I just find them an interesting situation, as for long periods there has been no decent Belgian NT, yet they had one fairly decent period in the 70's through to the 80's, but nothing of note since.....until now, you would think. Although I have to admit, I have never seen them in a competitive game, but merely the individuals who comprise it playing for their respective club sides, so I am theorizing quite a bit here. So yeah, how good could they be? One thing they have is time, as most of those players are in their early-mid 20's, so there is a lot of room for improvement on what is already a very good group of individuals. The other thing is that a lot of the current, all-conquering Spanish NT have said they will retire after the next World Cup in 2014, Italy are in a transitional period, France seem to lose their shit every so often, Germany could be scarred from so many near misses of recent times (especially if you include a lot of their players from the Bayern teams that lost recent CL finals) and England don't appear to be producing that absolute quality through the youth. I'd be interested to hear from those who watched the older Belgian teams, especially the '86 World Cup one (from that great pic above), unlucky to have been denied a World Cup final appearance by the individual brilliance of one of, if not THE best player the game has ever seen. Thoughts?