Belgium’s footballers opened the new edition of the Nations League last night with a solid 3-1 victory against Israel, and the match will be remembered for the fact that the hosts had no place to welcome the visiting team.
Nothing about this match would have been unusual if it hadn’t been played far from Belgium and if the Belgians hadn’t been penalized. On the contrary, the host didn’t have a city willing to host the visiting Israeli team.
Brussels initially applied to organize the match but withdrew for security reasons. The Belgian Football Federation then tried to find another city, but all of them refused to host the game due to strained relations following Israel’s bombings in the Gaza Strip. The Belgians deemed it ‘impossible to organize such a high-risk match due to potential incidents.’
This is the first such case in elite football in recent years where one of Europe’s serious teams had no host city for a home match.
Matches have been played behind closed doors and on neutral ground before, but never because the match organizers and the local football federation decided so. As in many times in the past, Hungary once again hosted a match that didn’t trouble them much, so Belgium hosted Israel in Debrecen and celebrated with a 3-1 result.
Kevin De Bruyne was the double goal scorer for the hosts, and Youri Tielemans added another goal, with Israel’s only goal being an own goal by Timothy Castagne.”**
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