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 »
A year ago I wrote the following. “It’s been called the most exciting title race in Europe, but even those using that terminology agree that the Playoffs format falsifies the championship.” “The games between the top clubs come so thick and fast, it can be too much – financially – for the fans, too much… Read More »
The infamous playoffs start this weekend. The top six (Standard Liege, Anderlecht, Racing Genk, Club Brugge, Lokeren and Zulte Waregem) will play each other twice in the next six weeks. The clubs start with half of the points gained in the “classic” season. So the clubs start as follows: Standard Liege 34 points, Club Brugge… Read More »
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 »
It’s March 1, 2011, at Neerpeerde, home of the Anderlecht Academy. Charleroi U17s are the visitors. Within two minutes, Anderlecht take the lead through a fragile-looking boy who is later elected “man” of the match. But of course he is not a man; he is a boy and he is a year younger than the… Read More »
In Belgium’s Jupiler Pro League (the JPL), the real race for the title – and the 15 or so millions of euros that go with direct entry to the Champions’ League – starts with the playoffs. That’s because the JPL has a structure whereby the top six after the ‘classic’ season has finished enter the… Read More »
It’s been a typical week in the world of Belgian football, both on and off the field. There’s been lots of talk about red cards and suspensions, one player who wants to be a ‘Red Devil’, another who seems a little unsure about his future and another who is seen as a saviour for his… Read More »
The team of the week was undoubtedly Zulte Waregem, annual budget 8 million euros, but as usual most of the noise surrounded Anderlecht, the league’s wealthiest club. It’s been a bad week for the Brussels boys in both league and cup. Strangely though, there’s been little talk of crisis with most observers calling for John… Read More »
It’s just over halfway through the season proper in the Jupiler Pro League but as the ‘end-of-season playoffs’ count for 40% of points overall (points gained by the end of the classic season are divided by two), we’re just getting started in Belgium. No one likes the current system and this is probably the last… Read More »
The Standard-Anderlecht clash at Sclessin today brings together Ron Jans and John Van den Brom, two of the five Dutch coaches in the Belgian first division. The coaches at two of the country’s leading clubs have had differing fortunes in their first couple of months in Belgium. Jans has certainly shown himself to be the… Read More »