Leicester City defender Wout Faes may find himself battling for his future as a regular starter for Belgium.
That’s if the response in the Belgian press to his latest performances is anything to go by.
Faes has been a key player for Leicester since joining from Reims in 2022, playing 94 times across all competitions. The 24-year-old has started all 11 of the Foxes’ Premier League games so far this season.
His form at the King Power Stadium has seen him become a regular for the Belgian national team, picking up 25 caps to date.
Even Leicester’s relegation to the Championship and subsequent 2023/24 second-tier campaign couldn’t displace him, with Faes playing every minute of Belgium’s Euro 2024 campaign.
Wout Faes’ Belgium spot under threat?
That may change soon, however. Belgium are currently enduring a run of just one win in their last eight matches. What’s more, their 1-0 defeat to Israel on Sunday meant they closed their Nations League campaign with just one point from their final five matches.
Faes has come in for particularly strong criticism for his performance in the Belgian media, despite a performance that yielded 92% pass completion, 100% aerial duel success, five clearances and two interceptions.
Scoring him at 2/10, Walfoot‘s Florent Malice wrote: “Absolutely catastrophic. We know that Wout Faes is, at best, a decent defender, from whom we should not ask the moon.
“The problem will always have been to make him the boss of the defence while he multiplies the blunders match after match, without departing from a totally misplaced arrogance. Let’s hope that his role changes for the next campaign or it will be impossible to move up a level.”
Voetbal Primeur were not quite as harsh, but Faes could still only register 5/10 in their player ratings.
“When he slipped and gave his opponent a free path towards Casteels, the frustration of many Belgian fans undoubtedly (again) rose high,” they wrote. “Faes still looks unhappy too often. Apart from that slip, the big mistakes were absent, but his positional play was not always sharp. Could not steer the rudderless ship any further.”