It’s an almost inconsequential battle between the Golden Generation of Belgium and the Generation Y of the England players. A Samuel Umtiti header may have broken their hearts and shattered the dream of winning their elusive World Cup crown, but the star-studded Belgian team will play for pride.

On the other hand, a crestfallen England, who came into the tournament as a band of gung ho boys who over the past three weeks have matured into a group of men to emerge as one of the most formidable teams in this tournament, will leave no stone unturned to leave Russia holding their heads high.

Incidentally, the two sides are meeting for the second time in this year’s World Cup after locking horns with each other in their Group G game, which the Belgians won courtesy of Adnan Januzaj goal.

It’s going to be yet another battle between youth and experience with nothing to lose. Roberto Martinez’s side, featuring a slew of stalwarts like Thibaut Courtois, Vincent Kompany, Romelu Lukaku, Kevin De Bruyne and Eden Hazard to name a few, will take on Gareth Southgate’s unfancied young and talented team, led by a talismanic Harry Kane, the likely winner of the Golden Boot with his six-goal tally, and his compatriots, including Jordan Pickford, Raheem Sterling, Dele Alli, Jesse Lingard, and Harry Maguire among others.

The Red Devils will aim to better their previous all-time best performance of finishing fourth after losing to Michel Platini’s France in extra time in the 1986 World Cup in the third-place playoff. Their nothing-to-lose attitude is reflected on De Bruyne’s comments after he was asked about the failure of the Golden Generation to win the trophy.

“Generations. Who talks about generations?” De Bruyne said. “We are a small country. We can be very happy and lucky that we can have the team that we have. We don’t have the resources, the infrastructure, the money that other countries have. What we have is a really good team that performed really well.”

England captain Kane, who is expecting the birth of his second child in the next 48 hours, also sounded positive and motivated despite their defeat at the hands of Croatia in the semifinal.

"It hurts now but I know when we look back there are a lot of positives, (a lot of) experience we can take. That's the aim, in two years' time in the Euros to go again and win big tournaments," said the Tottenham Hotspur striker.

For the record, England have played just one third-place playoff game in World Cup history when they lost to Italy in 1990 after making it to the semifinal the last time before this edition. The highlight of that game was David Platt’s spectacular goal for a losing cause.

If Belgium have an amazing scoring rate by their side, they have also conceded a number of goals in majority of the games in this World Cup so far. For England, almost all of their goals, including Kane’s six, came from set-pieces or dead ball situations as they hardly managed to score any goal through a well-coordinated attack from the regular play.

Nonetheless, once the bridges over River Neva draw to a close on Saturday, Saint Petersburg will play host to  a football game one last time in this year’s World Cup in Russia.