Jan Vertonghen put on the Red Devils shirt for the 150th time on Tuesday evening in the European Championship qualifier against Estonia. And after just four minutes he headed the 1-0 into the net, his tenth international goal. Talk about a wonderful evening for the jubilee.
The now 36-year-old Vertonghen played his first international match for Belgium on June 2, 2007. He was immediately given a starting place as a midfielder by then national coach René Vandereycken in the 1-2 home match against Portugal, in the qualifications for the 2008 European Championship in Switzerland and Austria. Afterwards, the rarely injured Vertonghen would almost never disappear from the starting eleven, allowing him to collect almost a hundred caps in just over ten years.
In October 2017, he surpassed Jan Ceulemans as the all-time record international player with 97 caps. By comparison, it took Ceulemans almost fourteen years (from March 1977 to February 1991). At that time, a lot fewer international matches were played. Vertonghen was present at all major tournaments. The defender can therefore look back on the 2014 World Cup, the 2016 European Championship – when he was injured in training the day before the quarter-final against Wales -, the 2018 World Cup, EURO2020 and the World Cup at the end of last year in Qatar. He is now preparing for next year’s European Championships in Germany.
Vertonghen will remain number one for a while, because his first three pursuers in the all-time rankings – Axel Witsel (130 caps), Toby Alderweireld (127) and Eden Hazard (126) – have already left the national team closed. In joint fifth place, with 109 caps each, follow Dries Mertens, who was never called up under Tedesco, and all-time top scorer Romelu Lukaku.