The Derniere Heure headline said "This team has guts!". La Libre Belgique called the result "a good start", while Le Soir went for "Nothing lost - everything to play for."
Over in the north of the country, it was a very different story. Het Nieuwsblad said the Devils had gone from "heaven to hell via purgatory".
Het Standaard talked of "terrible blunders" and Het Laast Nieuws called it "a sin".
The Flemish press also criticised Waseige's tactics, saying that he was too afraid of the opposition.
Perhaps revealingly, Het Nieuwsblad gave the lowest marks possible to two players, Daniel van Buyten and Johan Walem.
They were the only two Francophone players in the starting line-up, apart from untouchable skipper Wilmots, who happens to be fluent in the country's three official languages - French, Dutch and German.
The differences in reaction were sufficient to provoke a debate in the evening World Cup program on RTBF (the Francophone channel).
Reaction ranged from "it's typically Belgian" to "the Flemish press got it right".