Belgium vs Italy: Marc Wilmots struggles to rein in expectation ahead of Euro 2016 opener in Lyon

For a nation that has never won a major football tournament Belgium’s Red Devils carry an onerous weight of expectation into Euro 2016. One of their most gifted former players, Enzo Scifo, who played in four World Cups including the 1986 semi-final, expects a Belgium-France final and he is not alone.

But that’s what happens when a squad is the most expensively assembled in the tournament and is the continent’s leading side in the Fifa rankings, second only to Argentina.

Coach Marc Wilmots, a former international team-mate of Scifo, has been trying to rein in expectation. A semi-final place, he says, would be ‘something special’, ‘an exceptional achievement’, and ‘a great result’.

Wilmots, whose managerial record is thin, has been criticised for putting substance ahead of style with a widespread belief that the team should be more attractive given the flair at his disposal. He, though, insists ‘discipline and efficiency’ get results, not ‘champagne football’.

So, while Wilmots will find room for both Eden Hazard and Kevin de Bruyne in his line-up against Italy in Lyon tonight, they are expected to have to reluctantly flank Romelu Lukaku with Marouane Fellaini in the No.10 role both covet.

This quartet make up a substantial share of the £320m the Belgian squad cost their current clubs, comfortably more than their three rivals in Group E combined, and £130m more than England’s squad - itself the third most expensive.

Such is the talent at his disposal Wilmots has omitted Tottenham’s Nacer Chadli and Everton’s Kevin Mirallas, but would dearly have loved to have been able to include yet another Premier League player, Vincent Kompany.

His absence through injury exposes Belgium’s one weak area, full-back. Such has been the surfeit of central defensive talent Wilmots has deployed Tottenham pairing Jan Vertonghen and Toby Alderweireld on the flanks.

With Kompany out Alderweireld is likely to move into the centre but alongside Thomas Vermaelen, the former Arsenal player now with (but rarely playing for) Barcelona. Vertonghen will stay on the left with either Laurent Ciman, who plays for Montreal Impact in MLS, or Jason Denayer, on loan to Galatasaray from Manchester City, at likely right-back.

Wilmots has spent much of his adult life either playing for or coaching the national team but between the two roles he was a politician, serving in the Belgian senate. This interlude was not a success, but his political nous has been instrumental in unifying a squad previously split in line with the divisions in Belgian society, both between Flemish and Walloon, and the indigenous and immigrant communities. The former fissure left Belgium without a government for more than a year but the latter has become more pressing in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris in November and Brussels in March.

Like their hosts Belgium have more than football on their minds. The Isis-inspired atrocities were organised in Brussels and featured Belgian nationals. In an untimely reminder a Belgian court on Thursday agreed to the extradition to France of Mohamad Abrini, a suspect in both incidents.

Kompany - a key figure in squad-bonding who has joined the team between media duties - has spoken eloquently of the need for the national team to be a symbol of unity and integration. Kompany hails from Uccle, the same suburb in which Abdelhamid Abaaoud, suspected ringleader of the Paris attacks, went to school. Speaking to CNN he said: “When I was a kid in my neighborhood there was nobody that supported Belgium. It was impossible and unthinkable because nobody could relate to the national team.

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“Today, I walk the streets in Brussels and young kids of Arab origins, Congolese origins, French origin, everyone is happy to wear the colors of Belgium, or most of them at least. I think that's the reason why I'm proud to play for Belgium - because I can take ownership.”

The current squad includes players who have heritage in Congo (Kompany, Lukaku, Benteke), Morocco (Fellaini ), Mali (Moussa Dembele), Iberia (Yannick Ferreira Carrasco), Indonesia (Radja Nainggolan), Kenya (Divock Origi), Martinique (Axel Witsel) and elsewhere. Few play in the domestic Jupiler League. Most, though, are Belgian-born and all are united in a desire to go one step further than Guy Thys’ 1980 vintage when Wilfred van Moer, Jan Ceulemans and Frankie van der Elst took Belgium into a final narrowly lost to Germany.

For this tournament they are based about as far away from Belgium as it is possible to be while remaining in France, training and staying in and around Bordeaux, in the south-west. This is not so much a conscious effort to put distance from the hysteria at home, more because Wilmots knows the area, having played for Girondins Bordeaux and there are established commercial links between Belgium and the city. Conveniently the draw gave them a game here against the Republic of Ireland here on Saturday in a tough group that also includes Sweden. First they must seek to repeat the November defeat of Italy, one of the few occasions in recent years they have beat a traditional big nation.

“People will be waiting for Belgium, and waiting for me, (to deliver)," said Hazard, who is captain in Kompany’s absence. At club level this is a familiar experience for him and most of his teammates, but not as a national team. How they cope with that will go a long way to determining whether this is one golden generation that does not prove to be made of pyrite.