Divock Origi features as Belgium lose to Italy at Euro 2016

Liverpool striker Divock Origi came on as a second-half substitute for Belgium against Italy, but he failed to prevent his country from losing 2-0.

Marc Wilmots’ much-fancied side opened their Euro 2016 campaign against a weak-looking Azzurri team, but the game didn’t pan out as many had predicted.

Belgium lacked cohesion from start to finish, while Italy defended in typically superb fashion, and looked slick on the counter-attack.

Former Sunderland man Emanuele Giaccherini opened the scoring in the first-half, before Southampton striker Graziano Pelle put the game to bed in the dying moments.

While Liverpool duo Simon Mignolet and Christian Benteke didn’t feature at all during the game, Origi entered the fray with 17 minutes remaining.

The 21-year-old replaced Everton‘s Romelu Lukaku, who had endured an extremely poor night, missing a golden opportunity to equalise in the second-half.

Origi added a spark that Lukaku had failed to provide, but he was also guilty of missing two glaring opportunities to equalise late in the day.

One glancing header should have nestled into the back of the net, and shortly after, he mistimed his jump when stationed right in front of goal.

It was a humbling evening for Origi and his Belgium teammates, who despite having a huge amount of talent in their squad, looked lacking in fight and balance.

Origi will hope that he did enough to usurp Lukaku for their next group game, against Republic of Ireland on Saturday.