Belgium U21

Send Belgium's under-21 side out for a European Championship qualifier and the shirt on their back carries no crest of their own. There is no separate badge, no nickname apart from the one the senior team already wears: Red Devils, borrowed whole, because the under-21s exist as an extension of the national side rather than a club with an identity to itself.

The team took the field for the first time on 3 September 1976, away to France in Amiens, and came away with a 1–1 draw. That fixture followed directly from a decision by UEFA to lower the age ceiling for its European under-23 competition to under-21, and Belgium built a side to fit the new bracket. It has never gone on to win that championship. The closest it came was 2007, when a run to the semi-finals.

Silverware elsewhere has been thinner still: one International Challenge Trophy, held between 2007 and 2009, with a runner-up finish in the same competition the cycle before. What the age group has produced instead is players who moved through it on their way to something bigger. Kevin De Bruyne and Eden Hazard both wore the shirt before the senior Red Devils turned into the so-called Golden Generation, though neither stayed long enough at under-21 level to rack up caps there. That distinction belongs to others: Jean-François Gillet holds the appearance record with 36, and Loïs Openda has scored more than anyone else to pull on the shirt, 13 goals from 18 matches.

Matches against the Netherlands under-21s carry an edge the fixture list otherwise lacks, sharpened by the shared border and a rivalry that runs through Belgian and Dutch football at every level.