Belgium have announced Mark van Bommel as the national team’s new head coach.A Belgium statement confirmed that the 49-year-old replaces the departed Rudi Garcia and will take charge on August 15 and lead the team through the 2028 European Championship. Van Bommel, a former Bayern Munich and Barcelona midfielder, will be joined by assistant coaches Boudewijn Zenden, Maarten Martens and Reinier Robbemond.Garcia left the head coach role this week after 18 months in charge of the side, with his contract expiring at the end of the World Cup cycle.Belgium were knocked out by eventual winners Spain in the quarter-finals, ending an unbeaten run of 18 matches, which stretched back to their 3-1 loss against Ukraine in March 2025.“It is a great honour to become head coach of Belgium,” Van Bommel said on his announcement. “I would like to thank the Royal Belgian Football Association for their confidence in me.“Belgium has outstanding players and enormous potential. Together with my coaching staff, we want to build a team that is disciplined, ambitious and brave enough to compete with the very best.“Success is never guaranteed, but hard work, honesty and commitment are. We will give everything to help this team improve every day and make the Belgian people proud. I am looking forward to meeting the players, the staff and the supporters, and beginning this new chapter together.”Van Bommel has been out of work since departing Belgian club Royal Antwerp at the end of the 2023-24 season. In his debut campaign, the Dutch coach guided the club to its first league title in 66 years.Antwerp exited the Champions League the following season in the group stages, managing three points from their six matches, and Van Bommel left at the end of that campaign after his side finished third in the regular season and sixth in the subsequent six-team championship group.Van Bommel earned 79 caps for the Netherlands during his playing career including being part of the squad that reached the 2010 World Cup final.He began his coaching journey with his nation’s under-17 side and had subsequent spells as the assistant manager of Saudi Arabia and Australia, while also working with PSV’s youth team, and going on to manage the first team.Van Bommel was sacked in less than five months of his appointment as Wolfsburg’s manager in the summer of 2021. He succeeded now-Nottingham Forest head coach Oliver Glasner, and won his first four matches of the 2021-22 Bundesliga campaign, but by October, was amid an eight-match winless run, and was dismissed from the role.He now takes over a Belgium side ranked eighth in FIFA’s world rankings.At the World Cup, Belgium largely underwhelmed in the group stages, though topped Group G with five points. They looked set to exit the tournament in the round of 32 when two goals behind against Senegal with four minutes to play, but staged a remarkable comeback to win the match 3-2 after extra-time. Garcia’s side then beat the United States 4-1 to reach the quarter-finals, where a late Mikel Merino winner sealed their exit.Van Bommel will now be tasked with ending the nation’s run of disappointing exits at European Championships when the tournament rolls around in 2028.Belgium have not progressed beyond the quarter-finals of the tournament since the tournament’s 1996 expansion, and in the two most recent iterations, have fallen in the round of 16 and quarter-finals.