Flemish people are in general better English speakers than Walloons, because Dutch is more related to it than French. And we suffer less from the accent. Also, Flemish people younger than, let's say 60 years, became better in English than French, due to a shift in pop cultural habits (TV, music, etc ...) and in more recent generations the influence of the world wide web. In a way, the same goes for Walloon people with English compared to Dutch.
Remco is a native Dutch speaker. He is very fluent in French because of living close to Brussels and playing football at Anderlecht, and fluent in English because it's a normal thing for a Flemish person nowadays. And of course, he's a pro athlete working with international people, that helps too. He probably knows some Spanish from living and training there, and will understand some German and Italian as well.
Well, since both Dutch and English are Germanic languages, they are much more related than French (which derives from Latin). So I find it sincerely weird that you deny them being closer. Although every European language is influenced by one another, of course.I don't think that's quite accurate. Dutch is not closer to English than French. The reason why we generally are better at English is because our language footprint is so small. Other than the Dutch (from the Netherlands), nobody in Europe speaks Dutch. Movies get subtitled, not overdubbed, simply because the market is too small. Most movies/series on TV are in English, so ever since we are small, we are exposed to the English language much more. In Wallonia and other French speaking parts, they simply get the French overdubbed movies and series. It's mainly a question of economics. It wasn't worth the trouble to hire actors to dub every movie and serie on TV, because Netherlands+Flanders is simply too small.
Furthermore, due to the same reason (small market), there is less money to make original content in our own language, and again our TV networks are forced to buy (mainly English) content to show on TV. The main exception has usually been childrens movies (like Disney etc).
Wallonia also gets a plethora of talkshows from French networks, but also a lot of other cultural influences, like French music. For us, considering the Netherlands is a much smaller country than France, that also is much less so.
And, when we visit another country, people there don't speak Dutch. They usually understand English or French. So the French speaking part, needs to resort to another language far less yet again, than Dutch speakers.
Other than that, the points you make are valid and complement what I said about our habits.
It's an interesting case either way. I'm happy to have a certain feeling for multiple languages. Which is probably the upside of speaking a Western-European but small-based language like Dutch, and as a Flemish person having more Roman influences than a Dutchman.