Belgium use too many subs against Luxembourg, win erased from record books

By Jack Maloney | Jun 4, 2014

With the 2014 FIFA World Cup getting underway in less than two weeks now, teams are playing friendly matches in order to get themselves ready for the big show. The matches give the manager and team a few chances to sort things out and get used to playing with each other in games again before the competition begins.

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While many countries get excited over these matches, they’re for the most part meaningless in terms of score. All that really matters is the preparation the players get from playing in them. Still, while the scoreline doesn’t matter in terms of qualifying for the World Cup or anything, every team still wants to win.

And Belgium did just that in their friendly against Luxembourg the other day. In fact, they did it with ease and style, romping to a 5-1 victory. Young star Romelu Lukaku scored a hat trick in the win, and fellow youngster Adnan Januzaj made his debut for the Belgians. But none of it is going to count in the record books. All because the team used too many subs.

From Pro Soccer Talk:

"In the 77th minute of the match defender Jan Vertonghen was replaced by Nicolas Lombaerts and that was Belgium’s seventh substitution of the game.You see, FIFA’s friendly rules allow a maximum of six substitutions. When Lombaerts replaced Vertonghen, that was Belgium’s seventh sub.Egg is all over Wilmots face as the 5-1 victory will disappear from existence and won’t count during the latest FIFA world rankings update on Friday. It will be like it never happened."

This is a bizarre story, and one I don’t think I’ve ever heard before. Sure it doesn’t matter in the long run, but scoring a hat trick is pretty cool, and now it will look like Lukaku never did it, and that sucks.