Belgium vs Slovakia Euro 2024 Prediction: The Red Devils’ Golden Generation Begin Their Last Dance | OneFootball

One of the top ranked nations at the tournament begin with a match against Slovakia.

Belgium vs Slovakia Euro 2024 Prediction: The Red Devils’ Golden Generation Begin Their Last Dance

Belgium vs Slovakia Latest Prediction

Belgium start their campaign up against the lowest ranked nation in their group, in what should be a relatively facile opener for their campaign.

We’ll also have more tips here closer to the time so make sure you check back closer to kick off for all of our best tips and predictions.

Belgium and Slovakia open their Euro 2024 accounts on June 17 in Frankfurt with both hoping for three points to start their campaign in a positive manner. `

Belgium swept to qualification in an easy style which has been becoming their trademark in recent years. Indeed, it is quite remarkable how well Blegium have qualified for major tournaments recently. They have topped their qualification group for the last three European Championships and the last three World Cups, losing only one match in that whole period of time. It is these runs of form in competitive matches that allows them to maintain their consistent FIFA ranking, which is currently #3, only behund France at this tournament.

This is Slovakia’s third straight qualification for the European Championships. They finished 2nd in their qualification group behind Portugal, who were the only team that Slovakia lost to in the tournament. The Slovakians have won a match in each of the group stages that they have competed in at the Euros, qualifying for the round of 16 in 2016, but losing out in that round to Germany 0-3.

Belgium Latest Team News

There’s no denying that the second coming of Belgium’s Golden Generation has let them down a little. For a nation that has been ranked inside FIFAs top five for a whole decade they have just a single third place at a World Cup to show for it.

Some of their big players from this generation are still burning quite brightly, Kevin De Bruyne has demonstrated his class again for Manchester City this season, and Romelu Lukaku dominated European Championships Qualification with over 2 goals per 90 minutes in the campaign, but the supplementation of these established stars with some breaking talents looks to be helping Belgium maintain their standards.

We can expect De Bruyne’s teammate Jeremy Doku and Arsenal’s Leandro Trossard to battle over the wide left spot, with Johan Bakayoko to get the nod on the other side of Lukaku and De Bruyne.  There will be legs and tough tackling in the midfield with Nottm Forest’s Mangala in there alongside, potentially, Aster Vranckx, or possibly Everton’s Amadou Onana.

Jan Vertonghen still leads the Belgian defence, 154 caps and counting, but he does have younger legs arouns him in Leicester’s Wout Faes, Fulham’s Timothy Castagne, and Arthur Theate. With the injury to Thibault Courtois, Belgium do have a question mark in goal. Forest’s Mats Sels is in decent shape to play, but Koen Casteels could be given the nod instead. Luton’s Thomas Kaminski made his senior Belgian debut this season too.

Slovakia Latest Team News

Slovakia are an exceptionally competant team, as shown by winning seven of their eight matches in qualification against teams not named Portugal.

They may have lost Marek Hamzik to retirement, but there is plenty of experience in this team, many of hope have been to multiple Euorpean Champioship finals.

Robert  Mak plies his trade at Sydney now but he should support Boavista’s Robert Bozenik and Lukas Haraslin in attack. Jan Kucka is 37 at this stage, so this will likely be his last major tounrament, and he makes up a midfield with foul magnet Ondrej Duda, and Napoli’s Stanislav Lobotka. The defence will be lead by Milan Skriniar, now at Paris St-Germain, so there is a real spine of quality, experienced pros to this Slovakian line-up

There isn’t much by way of talented youth coming into the squad at this moment in time, so Slovakia may have to continue to rely those experienced pros for progress in this tournament.

Belgium vs Slovakia Head to Head

There have only been three previous meetings between the nations, all of which are friendles, and they have all been tightly contested. However, none of them have been played since Belgium’s rise to prominence in 2014, so there isn’t much instructive advice from looking at the head-to-head.

Group E sees Belgium take on Slovakia at Frankfurt Arena on June 17 and all of the action will be live on ITV1 and ITVX, as well as online on the ITV website.

Every game at Euro 2024 will be shown live on either BBC or ITV, with the two platforms sharing the broadcast rights.