Kevin De Bruyne says Belgium will need their fans behind them at Euro 2024 after their Group E draw with Ukraine was met with boos from the stands.
De Bruyne, 32, was man of the match as Belgium ensured qualification for the last 16 of the tournament with a 0-0 stalemate in Stuttgart.
Despite moving on to the knockout phase supporters were left unimpressed with the nature of the performance and what they perceived to be time-wasting late in the game as De Bruyne and his team-mates opted to hold on to the result they needed to progress.
After De Bruyne, the Belgian captain, appeared to gesture to his team to applaud the fans before the reaction from supporters saw him instruct them to leave the field instead.
Belgium now face France in the last 16 in Dusseldorf on July 1, a game De Bruyne asked supporters to get behind his side for.
“We just need them,” De Bruyne said of the fans. “I don’t know what else to say. We just need the fans. We’ll need them against France. We needed them in the last three games. That’s it.”
“We tried to win the match. We had goalscoring opportunities,” he explained. “We didn’t take any risks with the corner because we knew we might concede a goal.
“If that happens, you’re out of the Euros. It’s a shame we didn’t manage to score before – we had opportunities – and after that we just need a fans to stay with us.”
Fans vented their feelings at the team at full-time (Carl Recine/Getty Images)
Pressed further, he added: “Up until the 90th minute we tried to find solutions out there. We even had two shots in the 90th minute, and Ukraine had one or two good opportunities, too.
“When there’s a minute left, you don’t take any risks. I can understand people want us to win, but if I put the corner over and they counter, everyone will kill me and say I didn’t make the right decision.
“So sometimes you take a risk and other times you need to be smart. Two minutes from the end, you need to be smart.”
Domenico Tedesco’s side have flattered to deceive so far and managed just one win — over Romania — and four points from their three games.
The head coach revealed his side’s preparations were interrupted by a longer-than-expected journey to the stadium.
“I have to say, the circumstances as we arrived here, how we arrived here at the stadium, I’ve never seen before. Never,” he said.
“It took one hour from the team hotel with a police escort with no blue night. The road was clear. Every red traffic light was clear, but we drove at 25mph.
“It’s unbelievable. Unbelievable. I had time to do a speech of two minutes when we got to the stadium. It was an important game, a tough one, but we had a bad preparation with this.
“So I’m proud of my team. We did well. At the end it was not easy because if we’d conceded one, we were out.”
GO DEEPER
The Briefing: Ukraine 0 Belgium 0 – Qualified success for Belgians, heartbreak for Ukraine
(Top photo: Carl Recine/Getty Images)
