It’s been a banner break for young Roméo Lavia, returning to the Belgian national team setup after a more than three-year absence, during which (as we know all too well) he’d been battling injury after injury after injury.
But the 22-year-old midfielder is enjoying his best run of fitness since joining Chelsea in 2023, and with his start against France last night, he made it four appearances out of four games with Belgium over the past couple weeks. Along the way, he not only notched his first senior
international start, but he’s now also collected his first senior international assist, setting up Belgium’s only goal of the game.
And for a while, it looked like that goal might hold up for an impressive win, but France would equalize in the 77th minute, and then pour on three more goals in what became a lopsided 4-1 victory. Lavia completed nearly the entire 90 minutes — his personal final boss — but was substituted off three minutes from time.
On the other side, Maxence Lacroix got yet another start for France and did complete the full-90. Our new center back started three of the four games in this break, with new national team manager Zinedine Zidane pairing him with three different center backs (Upamecano, Jacquet, and Yoro) amid the injury-enforced absences of William Saliba and Ibrahima Konaté. It would appear that Lacroix has Zidane’s favor, which is nice to see.
