Yesterday, the Belgian team played against Algeria, and won 2-1. Before the match, there was some criticism about coach Wilmots' decision not to field a number of top players in the team at the start of the match. Today, some journalists -- including, apparently, some Russian journalists -- seem to think that the team didn't play all that well, and that the Belgian team could be beaten by a better team.

I don't think that's the case; I think the strategy of Wilmots was a stroke of genius.

The Algerian coach fielded a wall of 5 defenders, and played a pretty good counter game. When the Belgian team had posession -- for about 65% of the time during the entire match -- the Algerians returned every man to their own half of the field. Whenever one of the Belgian strikers came close to the Algerian penalty area, at least two Algerian players would be near and block them off.

How does one win from a team that doesn't want to give you a millimeter of room? One way is to wear them out, and that's exactly what the team did: by keeping the pressure on the Algerian defense, the Algerian defense had to run a lot. Running a lot makes you tired, and if you're tired you make mistakes, or you can't follow a fresh substitute player.

During half-time, it was reported that Wilmots had relayed the message to his players that "the bench will make the difference". And indeed it did; some time into through the second half, Wilmots substituted three players -- two strikers and one offensive midfielder -- with the top players he'd kept on the bench. Two of these three players made the difference, scoring two goals to end up with 2-1.

Reading some articles today, it seems like many analysts think that this was a spur of the moment thing by Wilmots; but I think it's more likely that this was a deliberate strategy. Making the opposing defense run a lot is certainly a good strategy; but the downside of that is that your own offensive players will need to run a lot, too. If you can swap those out for top players on the bench...

It'll be interesting to see the next matches.