The Red Lions: how a small country became a hockey superpower, and refuses to let go

On 27 June 2026, the Belfius Hockey Arena in Wavre was the scene of a first. With a win over the Netherlands, the Red Lions secured the overall victory in the Hockey Pro League, and with it something no other country had at that point: a direct ticket to the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games. Two years before the Games, and two months before a World Cup on home soil. Belgium is moreover the number one in the world ranking, and in Tom Boon it has the reigning world player of the year. For a country where twenty years ago almost no one knew what a penalty corner was, that is almost unreal.

And yet the ultimate proof is still to be delivered. Of the twenty players McLeod selected for this World Cup, only seven played in the Olympic final of Tokyo. Dominating a long competition is one thing; winning a short tournament, where a single bad evening can wipe out everything, is another. That is precisely where it went wrong over the past two years, in the quarter-final of Paris and at the 2025 European Championship.

This dossier tells how Belgium became a hockey superpower, who the twenty players are who must prove it in Wavre, how they play and where their vulnerability lies. With the tactics, the rivals and concrete viewing tips for August 2026.

World ranking and qualification

The Red Lions did not have to qualify for this World Cup: as co-host of the tournament, together with the Netherlands, their place was secured. More important is where they stand after the qualifying period. In early 2026 Belgium and the Netherlands were still neck and neck at the top of the world ranking. Through a first overall win in the Sultan Azlan Shah Cup in late 2025 and a Pro League season with only one defeat, Belgium took over top spot during 2026.

What makes that position so remarkable is the continental context: the world's men's elite is largely European. The Netherlands, England and Germany belong to the absolute sub-top, and it is precisely against those countries that Belgium has to prove itself week after week. Top spot is therefore not a gift from a weak region, but the result of performing against the best. McLeod summed it up himself in early 2026: his team, in his own words, has "une longueur d'avance sur nos adversaires", a step ahead of the opposition.

The Pro League title and the Olympic ticket

The tangible proof came at the end of June. Belgium won the Hockey Pro League 2025-26 with 39 points, the second overall win in the club history of this tournament after 2021, and sealed it with a match to spare. Because the winner of this edition qualifies directly for Los Angeles 2028, the Red Lions were the first men's nation in the world with an Olympic ticket in the bag, alongside host nation the United States. For McLeod that changes the whole planning: "Already being qualified opens up possibilities for our programme over the next 24 months", and his players enter the World Cup without qualification pressure.

All of Belgium's World Cup appearances

Belgium took part in a World Cup seven times before, with 1973 as its debut. Between 1982 and 2010 the country was almost always absent: four times it did not take part, three times it failed to qualify. That makes the leap all the more remarkable: only from 2014 has Belgium been a World Cup regular, and immediately one of the best teams in the world.

The 2018 world title

The breakthrough came in Bhubaneswar in 2018. After a second place in the pool, the Red Lions saw off record champions Pakistan (5-0) in the second round, Germany (2-1, with goals from Hendrickx and Boon) in the quarter-final and England (6-0) in the semi-final. The final against European champions the Netherlands remained goalless in regulation time, after which goalkeeper Vincent Vanasch decided the shoot-outs with two crucial saves: 3-2. Alexander Hendrickx became joint top scorer of the tournament with seven goals. It was the first time Belgium had won a major national-team tournament.

Recent editions

Five years later, at the 2023 World Cup, Belgium again reached the final, this time against Germany. After 3-3 in regulation time the Red Lions lost the shoot-outs 5-4 and had to settle for silver. Yet that result, according to the Belgian federation, did "no harm" to a generation that gathered eight major medals in ten years. A telling comparison: the four medals the Red Lions won at World Cups and Games in that decade are one more than all other Belgian Olympic team sports have ever won combined. On top came the Olympic silver of Rio 2016, the European gold of 2019 in Antwerp (5-0 against Spain), the 2020-21 Pro League title and the crowning glory: Olympic gold at the Tokyo Games in 2021.

Philosophy and approach

No one embodies Belgian success as strongly as the New Zealander Shane McLeod, who guided the Red Lions to the World Cup, the European title and Olympic gold between 2015 and 2021. After a sabbatical he first returned as an assistant, and since October 2024 he has been at the helm again as head coach, with the explicit ambition of once again finding "the magic formula" for a new generation. The 57-year-old coach is regarded as a people-focused, connecting leader. What has always set his teams apart, and will continue to, is the players' commitment to a "style de vie de haute performance", a high-performance lifestyle. His staff includes Pascal Kina, head coach of top club Gantoise, as analytical coach: his task is to critique the team's own playing style, to work out how he himself would play against Belgium, and to work with the attackers. Above the team, high performance director Adam Commens watches over the rebuild, the development project known internally as "Paris and Beyond".

Paris 2024: the quarter-final and the legacy

The rebuild was prompted by a shock. At the Paris 2024 Games, with McLeod still an assistant, Belgium comfortably won its pool (including 6-2 against Australia, a rematch of the Tokyo final), but in the quarter-final against Spain it went wrong: 2-3, with a late consolation goal from Hendrickx that no longer helped. The Olympic title was gone. In the aftermath no fewer than seven veterans said goodbye, together worth more than 2,250 caps, among them record international John-John Dohmen (481 caps), captain Felix Denayer, Florent van Aubel, Loïck Luypaert, Cédric Charlier, Tanguy Cosyns and Emmanuel Stockbroekx. McLeod took over and resolutely chose rejuvenation.

EURO 2025 Mönchengladbach

How big that operation was became clear immediately. At the 2025 European Championship in Mönchengladbach the rejuvenated team was already eliminated in the group stage, behind the Netherlands and Spain, and finished only fifth after beating Poland. Commentators warned beforehand that the Red Lions were "no longer the top favourite". It was an honest measure of where the rebuild project stood.

FIH Pro League 2024-25 and 2025-26

Yet the picture was less bleak than that one tournament suggested. In the 2024-25 Pro League Belgium already finished second, driven by top scorer Tom Boon's 21 goals, the best result since the 2020-21 title. And in 2025-26 the team went all the way. The Red Lions remained strikingly consistent where rivals England, Australia and the Netherlands dropped points, and suffered their only real defeat in the final week, against Australia. On 27 June a win over the Netherlands in Wavre was enough to claim the title, after which the season was closed two days later with a 5-4 stunner against Australia after a 0-3 deficit.

Official final standings Hockey Pro League 2025-26. Belgium finished with 39 points, taking the title plus the Olympic ticket. Points and goal difference per country can be completed by the owner from the official FIH table.

The staff under McLeod

Alongside head coach Shane McLeod, the technical leadership consists of assistant Craig Sieben and analytical coach Pascal Kina, with Adam Commens as the federation's high performance director. The chairman of Hockey Belgium is Patrick Keusters, the CEO is Serge Pilet.

World Cup squad (official, 2026)

On Monday morning McLeod phoned his 23-man group and cut one goalkeeper and two field players, after which the federation announced the definitive twenty. The coach himself on his choice: "I think we have selected a very well-balanced team. We undoubtedly have a number of stars of the current generation in our ranks, but also a number of future stars, stars in the making."

Line distribution according to the federation's official squad; caps according to the national-team overview and therefore slightly higher after the Pro League finale. Clubs are those of the 2025-26 season: for 2026-27 transfers are confirmed for Vanasch (to Léopold), Wegnez (to Dragons) and Labouchère (to Pinoké).

The choices that hurt

The sharpest decision was in goal. Vanasch, three-time world goalkeeper of the year, was preferred over Loïc Van Doren, the 29-year-old younger brother of captain Arthur, who with 84 caps has been part of the core since 2017 but remained a reserve at every major tournament. Simon Vandenbroucke became second goalkeeper. In addition, brothers Olivier and Tobias Biekens missed out, because McLeod opted for the experience of Nicolas De Kerpel. McLeod had warned beforehand that this moment is never easy: he wants to inform each player himself, because some will be "extremely disappointed".

Five key players

Tom Boon is the beating heart of the team. The Brussels native from Royal Léopold made his debut back in 2008 and now stands at 383 caps and 330 international goals. In 2025 he became, as the third Belgian ever after Dohmen and Van Doren, world player of the year. His path was not smooth, he was once left out of a European Championship squad by McLeod, but according to teammate Hendrickx he is "like good wine" and now "fitter than ever".

Arthur Van Doren wears the captain's armband. The defender from Braxgata, previously active for years at the Dutch club Bloemendaal, is regarded as the intuitive, technically superior playmaker of the back line and was world player of the year in 2017 and 2018. In July 2026 a new accolade was added: fans across the world voted his splitting through-ball to Boon against Australia the best action of the Pro League season.

Vincent Vanasch is the multiple award-winning goalkeeper who was repeatedly the hero in shoot-outs, including in the 2018 World Cup final. At 38 he stands at 293 internationals and was voted best goalkeeper in the world three times (2017, 2018 and 2019). After two years in which his place was not certain, he is back in goal at this World Cup.

Alexander Hendrickx is the Belgian penalty-corner cannon. The drag-flick specialist from Gantoise was top scorer at the Tokyo Games and has scored 187 times in 224 internationals, a ratio that has few equals in world hockey.

Victor Wegnez passed the 200-cap mark during the Pro League season. The midfielder was named best player of the European Championship in 2019, won the Poligras prize for the best action a year earlier, and gives the midfield its dynamism.

Competition analysis by line

The McLeod system

The Belgian playing style is a textbook example of modern top hockey: possession with high pressure and lightning-fast transition. The basis is a refined zonal system, shaped in part by former head coach Jeroen Delmee, in which players defend space rather than a direct opponent, an approach that other top nations have since copied. The core principle is called "squeezing": as soon as the ball is on one flank, the defender on the help side shifts aggressively towards the central axis of the field to close the passing lane to the goal. This forces the attacker into the corners, where a turnover can be forced. In possession the Lions build up via a wide arc (the "bowl build-up") between their own 23-metre line and the halfway line, to lure the opponent out of their organisation and then accelerate via the flanks or through the centre. Against a low, compact block they turn to the aerial: a high ball over the midfield, which the Belgian receiver may take unimpeded thanks to the five-metre rule, bypassing the entire ground defence in one move. The doctrine is consistently "passing-first": on the watered artificial turf the ball travels faster than a player, so the Red Lions avoid risky dribbling duels and seek open space with superior receiving and passing.

The penalty corner as a weapon

No element is as profitable as the penalty corner, and there Belgium has a double weapon. Hendrickx can place his drag-flick from almost any angle flawlessly into the top corner, and Boon too is a feared drag-flicker. When the runner reads their direct push, the Lions switch to variants: a hard, flat shot to a tipper at the post, a lay-off (the one-two) to the injector, or a slip in which the ball moves subtly sideways at the stop to change the defender's angle. In the Pro League win over Argentina of February 2026, Hendrickx decided the match with two penalty corners at the death.

The goalkeeping battle and the honest caveat

In goal stands the experienced Vanasch, the shoot-out specialist, under pressure from the young Vandenbroucke. That same generational change immediately explains this team's vulnerability. McLeod began his rebuild with a group of 34 players, of which about ten were new faces, and narrowed it to a core of fewer than 25. Of the twenty World Cup travellers, only seven played in the Olympic final of Tokyo: Wegnez, Vanasch, Arthur Van Doren, Hendrickx, De Sloover, De Kerpel and Boon. The young players bring an enormous physical running capacity with which Belgium can sustain a punishing tempo over an entire tournament.

That is precisely where the open question lies. Dominating a sixteen-match competition, as in the Pro League, demands consistency; winning a World Cup demands that you do not stumble on a single evening. And it is precisely in those short tournaments that it went wrong over the past two years, with the quarter-final in Paris and a fifth place at the 2025 European Championship. Commentator Eddy Demarez said at the time that that EURO mainly served to gain experience, and that "the real test for this group only comes at the World Cup". McLeod himself played down the EURO exit as a stumble in a process that unfolds "in small steps". Added to that is a historical lesson: the golden generation "held on to the same players too long", unlike the Netherlands, which renewed thoroughly after Tokyo. The catch-up now made must correct that mistake, and the World Cup in Wavre is the first real exam.

Germany: the executioner of 2023

No opponent gets deeper under the skin than Germany. Die Honamas denied Belgium the 2023 world title in the shoot-outs, are reigning world champions and European champions, and meet the Red Lions straight away in Pool B in Wavre. It is a structured, defensively rock-solid team with a feared tournament mentality, able to settle matches clinically.

France: the pupil facing the master

The spice of Pool B lies in the French dug-out. Les Bleus have been coached since 2025 by John-John Dohmen, the most-capped hockey player of all time and a symbol of Belgian success, who knows the Belgian playing style through and through. With Spaniard Ramón Sala and Dutchman Jeroen Hertzberger on his staff, he wants to turn a match against his old team into a tactical chess game. Many French internationals also play in the Belgian league and know the system from the inside.

Netherlands: the eternal mirror

The Netherlands is the historical benchmark. Federation chairman and former international Marc Coudron lost dozens of times to Oranje in his playing career, and it was precisely that frustration that became the spark for the Belgian revolution. Today the neighbour is co-host and the world number two, and at the same time the role model for the renewal Belgium itself started too late.

Spain: the recent bogeyman

Spain eliminated the Red Lions at Paris 2024 and also got in their way at the 2025 European Championship. It is a tough, tactically well-organised team that has hurt Belgium more than once in knock-out moments.

Key players by rival

For Spain, Josep Maria Basterra and Marc Reyne were the goalscorers against Belgium in Paris. For France everything revolves around coach Dohmen's approach, with attacking expertise from consultant Jeroen Hertzberger. For the Netherlands, captain Thierry Brinkman remains a mainstay. Current key players per rival (Germany, and updated names for the Netherlands and France) to be completed in the owner verification with FIH and federation pages.

The mentality of Belgian men's hockey begins with daring to dream. When Marc Coudron became chairman in 2005, he acted, in his own words, "as if he were a prophet" and predicted gold for a country that structurally lost. Under McLeod that self-belief became a method. Internally, the coach says, it is "not so much about medals, but about the road to success"; the speed of the rebuild fascinates him more than the colour of the medal. The first overall win in the Sultan Azlan Shah Cup in late 2025 was, in that philosophy, at least as important as a tournament: fifteen days of living together in Malaysia forged "that invisible bond" between the new players.

Resilience is deeply ingrained. In the 2018 World Cup final the Lions turned around a 0-2 deficit in the shoot-outs, at the 2019 European Championship they overturned a 0-2 in the semi-final against Germany into a 4-2 win, and in the final match of the 2025-26 Pro League they came back from 0-3 to 5-4 against Australia. And in Tom Boon the team has a mentality anchor: a player who, according to teammate Florent van Aubel, "lives like a professional", has organised youth camps for years and is consciously mindful of the legacy he leaves behind. He is the bridge between the golden generation and the young cohort that now has to learn to win.

What characterises this team is that it does not see success itself as an end point. After the Pro League title, McLeod sounded not triumphant but forward-looking: "we are only at the beginning of a new great story". Hendrickx too keeps the bar high: he sees the team reaching a level that in his view is not yet the maximum, and calls the announcement of the squad a liberation: whoever is in can now go all out without selection stress.

Hockey in Belgium grew out of the well-to-do, French-speaking bourgeoisie. The oldest clubs, Royal Beerschot in Antwerp (1899) and Royal Léopold in Uccle (around 1900), were multisport clubs of the leisure class, and for a long time the sport was, in Coudron's words, "seen in Flanders as a Walloon sport, in Wallonia as a Brussels sport and in Brussels as an elitist sport". To this day Belgian hockey is strongly concentrated on the Antwerp-Brussels axis: Brussels alone has some sixteen clubs, with Ghent as a hockey city besides. Outside that axis the sport is still largely uncharted territory.

What made Belgium great was a deliberate professionalisation. Under Coudron and the Dutch coach Bert Wentink, the "Be Gold" youth programme started from 2005, sponsorship income grew from 65,000 to 1.4 million euros and the federation staff expanded from four to more than twenty full-timers. Successive cohorts became European youth champions, and the federation brought in top coaches from abroad. The number of hockey players rose from around 9,000 to 55,000. Where Belgian talents once had to develop in the Dutch top division, they returned around 2015 because their own league had by then become European top class. Club hockey is a family tradition, passed from parent to child, as at KHC Dragons or in the Stockbroekx family. The downside is the infrastructure: many clubs are full, with waiting lists and too few pitches. That is precisely why the permanent national stadium in Wavre, the Belfius Hockey Arena, is such a milestone.

The Belfius Hockey Arena: the Red Lions fortress

The Red Lions play all their pool matches at home, in the brand-new Belfius Hockey Arena in Wavre. The stadium rose on the site of the old Justin Peeters football stadium, has 4,000 permanent seats and is being expanded to 10,000 for the World Cup on a one-off basis. It was inaugurated on 1 April 2026 with gala matches against the Netherlands, which Belgium won. It is the first permanent home dedicated exclusively to hockey, and thus the capstone of twenty years of infrastructure ambition.

Pool B and the tournament format

The draw of 17 March 2026 placed Belgium in Pool B, together with Germany, France and Malaysia. The Red Lions open on Saturday 15 August against France, play the big match against Germany on Monday 17 August and close the first group stage on Wednesday 19 August against Malaysia. New to this World Cup edition is that for the best teams there are no quarter-finals: the best two from each pool form a second group stage of four countries, in which the head-to-head result from the first round counts, and from that the numbers one and two qualify for the semi-finals. One men's semi-final is played in Wavre, and the men's final is on Sunday 30 August 2026 on Belgian soil.

Scenario analysis: the road to the final

For Belgium everything first revolves around a top-two place in the pool. The match with Germany is likely to be decisive for pool victory and is at once a repeat of the 2023 World Cup final. The opening clash with Dohmen's France promises to be the trickiest tactically, because the French coach knows the Belgian system like no other; Malaysia is on paper the lightest task. Arno Van Dessel is especially looking forward to that start: an opening match in Wavre with a big crowd. If Belgium survives the pool, then follows the second group stage against the best from the other pools, with a semi-final in their own stadium in prospect. The ultimate scenario is easy to guess: a World Cup final on 30 August in a sold-out Wavre.

1. Spotting the bowl build-up. In possession, watch the back three or four Belgians. They do not stand in a straight line, but form a wide arc around their own 23-metre area. They calmly move the ball sideways to tempt the opponent into pressing. As soon as a forward chases across, a Belgian midfielder sprints into the vacated space. It is the starting signal of virtually every Belgian attack.

2. The squeeze on the help side. When the opponent attacks down one flank, look at the other side of the field. The Belgian defender on the non-ball side lets go of his direct man and shifts diagonally to the centre. That synchronised squeeze inward closes the passing lanes and pushes the attack into a trap along the sideline.

3. The aerial as an escape. If an opponent closes down the central axis with a low block, a Belgian defender, often Van Doren or De Sloover, pauses briefly on the ball. Watch the deep attackers: the defender scoops the ball high over the midfield, and the receiver may take it unimpeded thanks to the five-metre rule. In one move the entire ground defence is bypassed.

4. The double penalty-corner weapon. On the penalty corner, a double drag-flick threat is ready with Hendrickx and Boon. If both shooters look ready, but two attackers are positioned low at the post at the same time, watch for a variant: a flat shot for a tip-in or a lay-off instead of the direct push. Hendrickx already decided the Pro League win over Argentina with it in 2026.

5. Tom Boon, the maestro at an advanced age. At 36 the world player of the year is, according to Hendrickx, "the total package": physically and technically almost impossible to defend, and cool in the decisive moments. With 330 international goals to his name, he remains the man for the late deciders.

6. Vanasch in the shoot-outs. If a Belgian match ends level, then comes the house speciality: goalkeeper Vincent Vanasch was already the shoot-out man in the 2018 World Cup final and remains the Belgian trump card when scores are level.

7. The Van Doren pass. Watch for the moments when captain Arthur Van Doren stops the ball in the back line and suddenly switches the central axis of the field over sixty metres. Precisely such a pass to Boon was voted the best action of the Pro League season by the fans.

8. The rematch against Germany. On Monday 17 August, Germany awaits straight away in the pool, the team that denied Belgium the 2023 world title. Charged, and possibly decisive for pool victory.

9. Dohmen facing his Lions. The opening match on 15 August is against a France coached by John-John Dohmen, the Belgian record international who tries to beat his old team with their own weapons. A match full of familiar patterns.

10. The home crowd in Wavre. With an arena scaled up to 10,000 seats and a fervent home crowd, Wavre becomes a fortress. Watch how the Lions feed off the crowd in the closing stages.

On 30 August 2026 the World Cup in Wavre can go three ways. The dream outcome is a world title on home soil, the ultimate crowning of two decades of building and the proof that the new cohort has truly taken over the torch. The second scenario is an early exit, which would fuel doubt about whether the golden generation was properly succeeded. The most painful third scenario is a defeat against a rival, whether it is the rematch against Germany, co-host the Netherlands or the Spanish bogeyman.

What makes this World Cup so special is that the first half of the question has by now been answered. The system still produces: Belgium won the Pro League, tops the world ranking, was the first country to qualify for Los Angeles and still delivers world players of the year. A small country with some fifty thousand hockey players does not do that by chance. What is still missing is the proof at a short tournament, where a single lesser evening can wipe out everything and where it went wrong in Paris and at the 2025 European Championship. Two weeks in August, twenty players of whom seven knew the previous golden cohort from the inside, and a sold-out stadium ten minutes from Brussels. For the Red Lions, the real answer begins in Wavre.

Official sources:

• International Hockey Federation (FIH) and the world ranking
• World Cup 2026 (FIH) and the Hockey Pro League standings
• Hockey Belgium (KBHB)
• Team Belgium and Olympics.com
• Fédération Française de Hockey (for the French opponent)

Belgian media:

• Sporza (Dutch-language)
• RTBF (French-language)
• La Libre and La Dernière Heure (DH) (French-language)
• L'Avenir (French-language)
• BRUZZ and VRT NWS (Dutch-language)