Belgium national football team
men's national association football team representing Belgium
The Belgium national football team has represented Belgium in men's international football since their maiden match in 1904. The squad is under the global jurisdiction of FIFA and is governed in Europe by UEFA—both of which were co-founded by the Belgian team's supervising body, the Royal Belgian Football Association. Periods of regular Belgian representation at the highest international level, from 1920 to 1938, from 1980 to 2002 and again from 2014 onwards, have alternated with mostly unsuccessful qualification rounds. Most of Belgium's home matches are played at the King Baudouin Stadium in Brussels.
Belgium's national team have participated in three quadrennial major football competitions. It appeared in fifteen FIFA World Cups and seven UEFA European Championships, and featured at three Olympic football tournaments, including the 1920 Summer Olympics which they won. Other notable performances are victories over four reigning world champions—West Germany, Brazil, Argentina and France—between 1954 and 2002. Belgium has long-standing football rivalries with its Dutch and French counterparts, having played both teams nearly every year from 1905 to 1967. The squad has been known as the Red Devils since 1906; its fan club is named "1895".
Belgium finished in third place as hosts at UEFA Euro 1972.
The public source identifies “Belgium national football team” as men's national association football team representing Belgium. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Belgium, national and football.
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Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q166776. VIAF identifies the subject as 22145541701896600201. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1904, 1920, 1938 and 1980.
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This entry incorporates text from “Belgium national football team” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.