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

One minute from time, in a sold-out stand in Wavre, Tom Boon slots the ball home mercilessly from a penalty corner. 2-3 against Spain, and Belgium tightens its grip on top spot in the Hockey Pro League. It captures the Red Lions' season: twenty matches unbeaten in a row, first place in the world ranking, and a man of almost 36 who has just been voted the world's best hockey player. For a country where twenty years ago almost no one knew what a penalty corner was, that is almost surreal.

This dossier tells how that could happen. How Belgium, with its players almost all concentrated along the Antwerp-Brussels axis, grew into world champion, Olympic champion and European champion, and how a new generation under head coach Shane McLeod, after the farewell of the golden generation, tries to hold on to that level at a World Cup on home soil. With the squad, 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 how they stand after the qualification period. At the start of 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 dominant spring in the Hockey Pro League, Belgium took over top spot during 2026.

What makes that position so remarkable is the continental context: the men's world top 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. The top spot is therefore not a gift from a weak region, but the result of performing against the best. McLeod summed it up himself at the start of 2026: by his own account his team has "une longueur d'avance sur nos adversaires", a slight edge over the opposition.

All of Belgium's World Cup appearances

Belgium's full World Cup history before 2014 was sporadic and without any notable result; those older editions must be filled in by the owner from the FIH/Wikipedia tournament archive (see owner list). The fact that Belgium only became a fixed World Cup powerhouse in the most recent ten years underscores how recent the rise is.

The 2018 world title

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

Recent editions

Five years later, at the 2023 World Cup, Belgium reached the final again, 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 damage" to a generation that collected eight major medals in ten years. A telling comparison: the four medals the Red Lions took at World Cups and Olympics in that decade are one more than all other Belgian Olympic team sports ever won together. On top of that came the Olympic silver of Rio 2016, the European Championship gold of 2019 in Antwerp (5-0 against Spain), the 2020-21 Pro League title and the crowning achievement: Olympic gold at the Tokyo Games in 2021.

Philosophy and approach

No one embodies Belgian success as powerfully as New Zealander Shane McLeod, who steered the Red Lions to the World Cup, the European Championship and Olympic gold between 2015 and 2021. After a sabbatical he first returned as an assistant, and since October 2024 he is once again at the helm as head coach, with the explicit ambition of finding "the magic formula" all over again for a new generation. The 57-year-old coach is known as a people-centred, connecting leader. What has always set his teams apart, and will keep setting them apart in his view, is the players' dedication 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 job is to challenge their 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 mattered. The Olympic title was gone. In the aftermath no fewer than seven veterans bowed out, together good for more than 2,250 caps, among them record international John-John Dohmen (481 caps), captain Felix Denayer, Florent van Aubel, Loick Luypaert, Cedric Charlier, Tanguy Cosyns and Emmanuel Stockbroekx. McLeod took over and chose resolutely for rejuvenation.

EuroHockey 2025 Mönchengladbach

Just how big that operation was became clear straight away. At the 2025 European Championship in Mönchengladbach the rejuvenated team was already eliminated in the group stage, behind the Netherlands and Spain, and after a win over Poland finished only fifth. Commentators had warned beforehand that the Red Lions were "no longer top favourites". It was an honest gauge of where the rebuild project stood.

FIH Pro League 2024-25 and 2025-26

Yet the picture was less gloomy than that one tournament suggested. In the Pro League 2024-25 Belgium already finished second, driven by the 21 goals of top scorer Tom Boon, the best result since the title in 2020-21. And in 2025-26 the team broke through completely: a season of sheer dominance.

Standings Hockey Pro League 2025-26, as of 21 June 2026. If Belgium finishes top, that immediately earns a direct ticket to the Los Angeles 2028 Games. In the final week, double clashes with the Netherlands and Australia still await in Wavre; verify the definitive final standings before publication.

The staff under McLeod

Alongside national 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 president of Hockey Belgium is Patrick Keusters, the CEO is Serge Pilet.

World Cup squad (June 2026)

McLeod announced his twenty-man World Cup squad on 22 June 2026: a mix of a handful of experienced forces and a broad layer of young talent.

Club entries are based on the Euro 2025 selection; transfer windows and the exact caps per player are owner-verification (officially confirmed only in July). The Belgian press reported that Vincent Vanasch is leaving Oree for a new club; confirm his club entry.

Five key players

Tom Boon is the beating heart of the team. The 35-year-old from Brussels of Royal Léopold debuted as far back as 2008, scored more than 300 international goals and in 2025 became, as the third Belgian ever after Dohmen and Van Doren, named World Player of the Year. His path was not all roses, he was once left out of a European Championship selection by McLeod, but according to team-mate Hendrickx he is "like fine wine" and now "fitter than ever".

Arthur Van Doren wears the captain's armband. The Braxgata defender, who previously played for years at the Dutch club Bloemendaal, is regarded as the intuitive, technically superior distributor of the backline and was named World Player of the Year in 2017 and 2018.

Vincent Vanasch is the multiple award-winning goalkeeper who was repeatedly the hero in shoot-outs, including in the 2018 World Cup final. After a break in his career he returned and remains the automatic choice in the Belgian goal.

Alexander Hendrickx is Belgium's penalty corner cannon. The drag flick specialist of Gantoise was top scorer at the Tokyo Games and is regarded as one of the best drag flickers in the world.

Victor Wegnez returned, just like Vanasch and Hendrickx, after a break. The Waterloo Ducks midfielder was named best player of the European Championship back in 2019 and gives the midfield its dynamism.

Competition analysis per line

The McLeod system

The Belgian style of play is a textbook example of modern top hockey: possession with high pressure and lightning-fast transition. The foundation 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 aggressively shifts toward the central axis of the pitch 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 through 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 reach for the aerial: a high ball over the midfield, which the Belgian receiver may take unhindered thanks to the five-metre rule, bypassing the entire ground defence in one movement. The doctrine is consistently "passing-first": on the watered artificial turf pitches the ball travels faster than a player, so the Red Lions avoid risky dribbling duels and use superior receiving and passing to find the open space.

The penalty corner as a weapon

No part of the game is as rewarding as the penalty corner, and here Belgium has a double weapon. Hendrickx can place his drag flick flawlessly into the top corner from almost any angle, and Boon is also a feared drag flicker. When the rusher reads their direct push, the Lions switch to variations: a hard, low flat to a tipper at the post, a lay-off (the one-two) to the injector, or a slip in which the ball is nudged subtly sideways at the stop to change the defender's angle. In the Pro League win over Argentina in February 2026, Hendrickx decided the match with two penalty corners in the closing stages.

The battle of the goalkeepers and the honest caveat

In goal stands the experienced Vanasch, the shoot-out specialist, under pressure from the young Vandenbroucke. That same changing of the guard immediately explains this team's vulnerability. The young players bring an enormous physical running capacity with which Belgium can sustain a murderous tempo across an entire tournament, but in one-off knockout matches it sometimes still wobbles, as Euro 2025 and the Paris quarter-final showed. Commentator Eddy Demarez also pointed to a structural lesson from the past: the golden generation "held on to the same players for too long", unlike the Netherlands, which carried out a thorough renewal after Tokyo, so that Belgium eventually became less surprising. The catching-up now being done is meant to repair that mistake.

Germany: the executioner of 2023

No opponent gets further under the skin than Germany. Die Honamas robbed Belgium of 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, capable of settling 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 style of play inside out. With Spain's Ramon Sala and the Dutchman Jeroen Hertzberger on his staff, he wants to turn a match against his old team into a tactical game of chess. 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 to Oranje dozens of times during 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 that Belgium itself began too late.

Spain: the recent bogeyman

Spain knocked the Red Lions out at Paris 2024 and also stood in their way at Euro 2025. It is a tough, tactically well-organised team that has hurt Belgium in knockout moments more than once.

Key players per rival

For Spain, Josep Maria Basterra and Marc Reyne were the goalscorers against Belgium in Paris. For France, everything revolves around the approach of coach Dohmen, with attacking expertise from consultant Jeroen Hertzberger. For the Netherlands, captain Thierry Brinkman remains a constant. 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, by his own account he acted "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 ever title at the Sultan Azlan Shah Cup in late 2025 was, in that philosophy, at least as important as a tournament: fifteen days living together in Malaysia forged "that invisible bond" between the new players.

The resilience runs deep. In the 2018 World Cup final the Lions turned around a 0-2 deficit in the shoot-outs, and at Euro 2019 they overturned a 0-2 into a 4-2 win in the semi-final against Germany. 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 focused on the legacy he leaves behind. He is the bridge between the golden generation and the young crop that now has to learn how to win.

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 multi-sport associations of the leisure class, and for a long time the sport was seen, in Coudron's words, "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 heavily concentrated along the Antwerp-Brussels axis: Brussels alone counts some sixteen clubs, with Ghent as an additional hockey city. Beyond 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 in 2005, sponsorship income grew from 65,000 to 1.4 million euros and the federation's staff expanded from four to more than twenty full-timers. Successive generations 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 Hoofdklasse, 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 as a one-off. It was inaugurated on 1 April 2026 with gala matches against the Netherlands, which Belgium won. It is the first permanent home dedicated solely 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. New to this World Cup edition is that there are no quarter-finals: after a first group stage, the best two of each pool advance to a second group stage (the "pool of champions"), after which the top two of that reach the semi-finals. A men's semi-final is played in Wavre, and the men's final is set for Sunday 30 August 2026 on Belgian soil.

Scenario analysis: the road to the final

For Belgium, everything first revolves around a top-two finish in the pool. The clash with Germany will probably be decisive for winning the pool and is at the same time a rerun of the 2023 World Cup final. The opening confrontation with Dohmen's France promises to be the toughest tactically, because the French coach knows the Belgian system like no other; Malaysia is on paper the lightest task. If Belgium survives the pool, the second group stage follows 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. Recognising the bowl build-up. When 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 play the ball wide to tempt the opponent into pressing. The moment a forward charges in, a Belgian midfielder sprints into the space that has opened up. It is the starting signal of almost every Belgian attack.

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

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

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

5. Tom Boon, the maestro on in years. At 35, the world player of the year is, according to Hendrickx, "the complete package": physically and technically almost impossible to defend, and cool in the decisive moments. Watch for his late deciders.

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

7. The young engine. Keep an eye on the new generation: midfielder Arno Van Dessel, a rising FIH talent, brings game intelligence, while Nelson Onana seeks depth with pace and power. Their freshness lets Belgium sustain a high tempo.

8. The rematch against Germany. In the pool, Germany awaits straight away, the team that took the 2023 world title from Belgium. Charged, and possibly decisive for winning the pool.

9. Dohmen facing his Lions. France is 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 fanatical home crowd, Wavre becomes a fortress. Watch how the Lions feed off the public 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 generation has truly taken over the torch. The second scenario is an early exit, which would feed the doubt about whether the golden generation has been 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.

Whatever the outcome, the fundamental question goes beyond this single tournament: is Belgian success a system that keeps producing, or was it a one-off generational miracle? The figures speak in favour of the system: eight major medals in ten years, three players of the year, a rejuvenated squad that against all odds leads the world ranking. But it is only at such a final tournament, with the pressure of a home crowd and the whole hockey world visiting, that it becomes clear whether a small country can defend its place at the top of the world even after the legends. 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)