MARC WILMOTS, the Belgium manager, yesterday insisted he has already picked his team to face Scotland at Hampden.
The Group A leaders know a win in Glasgow on Friday will take them a long way towards playing at the World Cup in Brazil, but Wilmots will be forced to do without Manchester City's injured Vincent Kompany and is likely to replace him with Zenit Saint Petersburg's Nicolas Lombaerts in defence.
"The players already know who is going to play against Scotland," he said. "I will not disclose my team, but they all know who is going to play. That way, they can prepare for the game in the best circumstances."
If Wilmots caps Zakaria Bakkali, the 17-year-old would then be tied to Belgium rather than the country of his birth, Morocco. The youngster, who plays with PSV Eindhoven, is in the squad but Wilmots said he hadn't yet made his mind up. "Zakaria has not yet made his choice," he said. "Nothing is certain as long as he has not played. He must choose with his heart."
He also had no concerns over the mindset of Marouane Fellaini, who has just completed a £27.5m transfer to Manchester United. "Marouane was allowed time off to complete his move. Now he must focus on Friday."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article