BRUSSELS, July 26 (Reuters) – Belgium goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois \u2060has welcomed the appointment of Mark van Bommel as the country\u2019s new coach and said he would \u2060talk to him about whether he continues his international career.<\/p>\n
Van Bommel was appointed only weeks after \u200cBelgium\u2019s quarter-final exit at the World Cup effectively cost Rudi Garcia his job with the French-born coach and the Belgian federation agreeing not to renew his deal.<\/p>\n
Van Bommel was quickly appointed to replace him and Courtois said the former Dutch international would enjoy the respect of his new \u200bcharges.<\/p>\n
“It wasn’t really a surprise because his name had been circulating for \u2060quite a while,” Courtois told reporters at a \u2060sponsorship event.<\/p>\n
“I think he proved at Antwerp that he’s a top coach. A lot of the players speak very \u2060positively \u200cabout him, so I’m looking forward to getting to know him.<\/p>\n
“The most important thing is that Van Bommel himself played at the highest level and knows what it’s like to play matches like these.<\/p>\n
“That top-level experience \u2060is definitely a positive and it naturally earns a lot of respect \u200bfrom the players,” he said.<\/p>\n
Whether the \u200c34-year-old Courtois himself will actually play under Van Bommel remains uncertain.<\/p>\n
After the World Cup, the Real Madrid \u2060goalkeeper said that he \u200bwould like to continue with Belgium but only if he was allowed to skip the upcoming Nations League campaign.<\/p>\n
“After the World Cup, I definitely still want to continue, but it will depend on the conversation I have with him,” Courtois said.<\/p>\n
“I’d like to \u2060have some rest during the Nations League and we’ll have to \u200btry to reach an agreement on that.<\/p>\n
“After that, I’ll decide whether I want to continue or not.”<\/p>\n
Courtois also reflected on Belgium’s World Cup exit, which came after he was injured in the last-eight tie against Spain in Los Angeles on July \u206010 and his replacement Senne Lammens made an error to gift eventual champions Spain a 2-1 win.<\/p>\n
Courtois later said he believed he could have continued and made the point again at the weekend.<\/p>\n
“I just felt that I couldn’t take goal kicks anymore.<\/p>\n
“A defender could have taken them instead. During open play, I could still have made sideways passes.<\/p>\n
“But the coach \u200bsaid: ‘We agreed that only players who are 100% fit will play.’ Fine, no \u2060problem.”<\/p>\n
Courtois said there was never any disagreement with Garcia, who was heavily criticised for many of his choices during the \u200bWorld Cup.<\/p>\n
“Of course, I was disappointed because it was against Spain and we \u200cwere in a good rhythm. But the team is more \u200bimportant than I am.<\/p>\n
“The decision was made and there was never any bad blood. I never wanted to speak badly about him (Garcia),” he added.<\/p>\n
(Writing by Mark Gleeson in Cape Town; Editing by Clare Fallon)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BRUSSELS, July 26 (Reuters) – Belgium goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois \u2060has welcomed the appointment of Mark van Bommel as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":825282,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,13201,596,85,21418],"class_list":["post-825281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fifa","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=825281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825281\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/825282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=825281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=825281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=825281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}