Belgium national football team final tournament under Spanish manager Roberto Martínez, becoming the first European team besides hosts Russia to do so. The team reached an all-time high third place in the World Football Elo Ratings after their win in the round of 16. Belgium was eliminated in the semi-finals by eventual champions France, but won the third place play-off against England. In home matches, the team's outfield players traditionally wear the colours of the Belgian flag: black, yellow and red. Red dominates the strip and is often the sole jersey colour. The away colours are usually white, black or both; in 2014, the
National colours of Germany emperor Francis II abdicated from the throne in 1806, he adopted the colours as the flag of his Austrian Empire. The black-red-gold tricolour's first known appearance on a state flag, anywhere in a German-ethnicity sovereign state within what today comprises Germany, occurred in 1778. Following this documented "first-use" by the elder Reuss noble line of the modern tricolor combination, the connection of the black-red-gold tricolour with the Reichsbanner design appears to have been made as early as during the March Revolution. Ferdinand Freiligrath in his poem "Schwarz-Rot-Gold", published 1851 and dated 17 March 1848, has the lines "Das ist das