Category Archives: Uncategorized

JPL Playoffs Round 3: MPH turns it around

Playoffs 1 The big winners of the third round of matches were Michel Preud’homme and Hein van Haezebrouck. The latter’s team, Gent, became the first team to win a ‘Playoff 01’ match on an away ground when they went to Sclessin and easily defeated a poor Standard Liege. Preud’homme’s Club Brugge looked to be down… Read More »

Anderlecht – Belgian giant and feeder club for Europe’s big leagues

As Lady Gaga once said, football is a funny old game. Going into their Champions League match with Arsenal on Tuesday night, Anderlecht were seen as lambs to the slaughter. They had won one of their last five league games and would be without Steven Defour and Matias Suarez through injury and Alexsander Mitrovic as… Read More »

It was twenty years ago today

It was 20 years ago today – give or take a few days – the Belgian team seemed to lose its way! Twenty years ago, almost to the day, Belgium faced Saudi Arabia after having won their first two games in the World Cup. With Georges Grün having already picked up a yellow card, coach… Read More »

Squad to face Ivory Coast underlines stability in Belgium’s World Cup selection

Marc Wilmots has announced the Belgian squad to meet the Ivory Coast next week and there are no shocks. In keeping with previous squads, Wilmots is sticking with his trusted players regardless of whether they play regularly with their clubs. Of the 23-man squad, only one position is genuinely up for grabs – reserve right… Read More »

Youth will have its day

I wrote this back in October for World Soccer. It explains, to an extent, why it’s a season of transition for all of the bigger clubs in the Jupiler Pro League. Only Standard Liege have managed to avoid the charge of ‘under-performing’ this season and it’s likely that several of their top youngsters could move… Read More »

Monday Mash: Anderlecht miss the bus at Charleroi

Several big clubs suffered at the weekend. Anderlecht arrived late for their match at Charleroi and throughout the game. They only started playing at 2-0 down; it finished 2-1. Second-placed Genk went to Oostende and were thrashed 4-0; Anderlecht loanees Fernando Canesin and Jordan Lukaku were instrumental in the result. Then league leaders Standard were… Read More »

Belgium off to Brazil

A tad late on the blog but just to add that Belgium won 2-1 in Croatia to confirm their participation in the 2014 Worl Cup finals in Brazil.

Monday Mash: Anderlecht’s youngsters in the spotlight

The big winners this weekend were Anderlecht and Zulte Waregem. Anderlecht, beset by injuries and suspensions, fielded a young side, went to Genk and returned with the three points. Kara’s early dismissal did help JVDB’s boys. Remarkably, despite the talk of crisis, Anderlecht are the ‘form’ team in the JPL. Later, Zulte Waregem beat Bob… Read More »

Belgium: Just one point

It’s exactly three years to the day since I started writing this blog. Today I find myself in Zagreb with Belgium needing just one point to secure qualification for the World Cup finals. In those three years the team has been transformed. Most of today’s players were in the squad three years ago but they’ve… Read More »